Portfolio I: This American Carnage
Bill Gubbins--Artist's Statement
The following six images are part of a larger body of work entitled This American Carnage, begun in 2015 and targeted for completion in 2020.
The intent of the work is to take the viewer on a journey through the waking daydream that is everyday life in the United States of America.
A waking daydream, yes: where things make sense, yet don’t; environments seem real, yet aren’t: and from which the dreamers want to awake, yet can’t. Throughout is a sense of dislocation, confusion, isolation; where cryptic messages emit from omnipresent screens and apocalyptic events seem imminent, inevitable, yet can’t be understood nor their arrival known.
The dreamers are often mesmerized by the vistas around them and the objects within yet seem unsure what to do next, as if trapped between ennui and action, as if actors, in a play, on a stage, struck with amnesia and suddenly without lines, without setting, helpless, unsure whether to stay, or go.
