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Monody, 2025. Cement, graphite powder, pigment, paper towels, tapes, and MDF. 88.5 × 36 × 36 in.
This work started from a desire to question how we perceive materials, and more fundamentally, how we define beauty in contemporary art. Beauty today feels like a concept emptied out by the market, replicated and circulated until it loses meaning. I find myself caught between resisting it and still wanting to make something that appears beautiful.
I chose concrete for its weight, its hardness, its associations with construction and permanence. Then I forced it into a form that looks soft, stretched, almost fragile. It resembles the formal language of Brancusi, but the resemblance is uneasy. It is not an homage, but a tension between attraction and critique. I wanted to see if I could make something seductive using a material that resists seduction.
It took nearly two months of trials to see whether this shape could even be made. When it was finally finished, I placed it on a roll of toilet paper. That placement felt right. It was understated, absurd, and strangely sincere. It undercut the effort without fully mocking it.
Maybe beauty now is not about elevation or transcendence. Maybe it is about conflict, about labor spent on something that refuses to mean what it’s supposed to.
Monody, 2025. Cement, graphite powder, pigment, paper towels, tapes, and MDF. 88.5 × 36 × 36 in.
This work started from a desire to question how we perceive materials, and more fundamentally, how we define beauty in contemporary art. Beauty today feels like a concept emptied out by the market, replicated and circulated until it loses meaning. I find myself caught between resisting it and still wanting to make something that appears beautiful.
I chose concrete for its weight, its hardness, its associations with construction and permanence. Then I forced it into a form that looks soft, stretched, almost fragile. It resembles the formal language of Brancusi, but the resemblance is uneasy. It is not an homage, but a tension between attraction and critique. I wanted to see if I could make something seductive using a material that resists seduction.
It took nearly two months of trials to see whether this shape could even be made. When it was finally finished, I placed it on a roll of toilet paper. That placement felt right. It was understated, absurd, and strangely sincere. It undercut the effort without fully mocking it.
Maybe beauty now is not about elevation or transcendence. Maybe it is about conflict, about labor spent on something that refuses to mean what it’s supposed to.