Eric Erekson, InAppropriate  32 x 6 feet.

Statement

The naked/nude figure creates an innate trigger imbedded in the physical makeup of human kind.  Accompanied by moral codes, social dilemmas, philosophical and existential discourse, as well as cultural taboos, the identity of the nude figure morphs and changes over time and societal norms.  The rational part of us uses designed codes of conduct relevant to our time to measure the quality of ourselves and others based on certain characteristics.

My work focuses on the real versus the ideal, and how we use these concepts as a ruler to measure the qualities of ourselves against the qualities of others to develop an understanding of identity.  In the world where images surround us, the real and ideal are constant with the gauges we use to measure the validity of identity in real life.  The practice of exploiting this perception is used widely in mass media to keep us striving for the identity of what we desire, by consuming at a level that we believe will bring our reality closer to our ideal existence.  My work is a disruption of the common gauges that we use to develop our identity.

By developing images that confuse our normal expectations of how we view the naked or the nude figure, my work leaves room to evaluate how we are gauging others and ourselves in the world around us.    This disruption in expectation leaves an opportunistic gap where we can question what it is we are looking at, and optimally in that gap choose to appreciate the characteristics that these variables add to each piece.