Catholicism within postmodern art takes a shy step on a pedestal within our changing art world; think Piss Christ, The Pope hit by a flying meteor, and David LaChapelle’s homeboy Jesus. Where centuries of holy depictions have offered divine interpretation and faithful expression to Western religion, I found myself questioning boundaries once clear to me. I initially saw my pursuit as ill-intentioned, unsure of the rules when it comes to digitally replicating, sometimes not inaccurate, though dilapidating and fallen from grace. My recent work has been dedicated to answering these questions; a series of digital sculptures titled, a little boringly, Unholy Objects, which, through software manipulation, offer design for debate. It felt necessary to use digital mediums in the pursuit of reinterpretation in our new and likewise digital culture.
Monsterance, a choking, mutating, rusting depiction of a traditional altar monstrance is deceptively grand. We can associate medieval Catholic iconography with an arguable glut of wealth and excess in grandeur, opposing wider society. In this sculpture, an apparent excess of capital is falsified by oxidising, exposed copper. Greening, dusted pennies – golden coins no longer.
My second piece is similar yet so far unnamed. Thousands of cross motifs simulated using artificial article effects create a claustrophobic, wheezing image. The church in today’s culture stands as a convoluted structure in modern communities. I see daily the apparently infinite interpretations of Catholicism, and perhaps more widely with Christianity in the United States right now, its explicit convolution within this election cycle’s unending chaos is beyond tiring.
Less so do I expect these pieces to spark debate, they are a comfortably far cry from being drowned in urine. I would rather promote these digital mediums as an accessible output for anyone questioning their environment’s norms. Sculpture, even when digital, is anything but binary, offering dimension beyond what we so often see as tiresome, immovable and two-sided debates. If we can draw the line between right and wrong, we can stand on it too.
Image created and provided by Tommy Manning.