Zachary Gabbard

Statement

I am a mold maker by trade and a mad scientist by design.  During my youth I spent a lot of time accidentally slicing open my fingers with serrated knives while reconstructing cardboard packaging into elaborate toys.  These days I make and sell work professionally as well as run a one-man atelier.  Bearing these things in mind, it is of no great surprise that last month while I was about to enter a massive abandoned building that a throwaway scrap of plastic should heighten the wonder and complexity of life for me.

On a previous occasion I had cased the hulking industrial specter and recovered a fabulous steel object that I immediately worked into Shadow Trap.  This initial find lead me to assume there were treasures galore to be found within.  I jump at any chance to acquire disenfranchised consumer objects that help me to elevate the mundane.  For me a found object must be somewhat ambiguous in order to become a unified part of my work without coming off as a standalone readymade.  The access into the building was a ground level ventilation duct, full of twisted metal, leading into a collapsed boiler room.  The shaft was the dimension of a coffin, ending abruptly in a ladder descending a twelve-foot drop to a soggy asbestos floor.  I was parked outside in my truck, and opening a value pack of flashlights, when the little plastic doodad that was to uplift me so fell onto my lap.  The form was utterly abstract and yet still maintained the look of purposefulness.  For me purposefulness without actual purpose is analogous to the predicament we face as humans where we try to create meaning for a universe with none inherent to it.  I strive for the elimination of false moralities and meanings in my life and art.  Only with their eradication can I be free to think and make judgments for myself.  The shape in some ways resembled my use of obfuscated cap guns in the work Hydra, in that the cultural object was present and ordinary and yet hidden from initial detection.  Controlling the speed with which a work penetrates its viewer is of importance to me.  I decided to make a plaster block mold of its shape and then simply display the negative.  Molds make the presence of negation palpable, and by having an object in negative I can imply it is dead and to be missed. Soon I was scrutinizing the other plastic packaging components, assessing their potential for a series of block molds that would stack together to form bizarre obelisks.  It wasn’t long before I realized that so many little scraps of garbage were in fact potentially part of a transfigurative experience where the commonplace could indeed be exalted in a way that is very personal to me.  The process of decomposing and reinventing the excesses of our consumer culture is sorely needed by this Wifi jacked Roman soldier.  I sometimes wonder if I am becoming Nietzsche’s last man, with no important battles left to fight, sitting on my laurels, choking down entertainment media, fast food, and pharmaceuticals with equal dispassion.  As a result I feel a great need to render the “it” as “thou” in this information age life of mine.  This activity helps me generate hope that reason and capitalism will indeed advance society rather then cause its slow implosion.

I went into the building and scoured it from top to bottom, finding no other objects suitable for my use.  It is curious how I found what I was looking for despite looking for it in entirely the wrong way.  Finding enlightenment in strange places has brought me to a sort of faith in chaos.  I carry this faith of mine with me to the studio where I invite cross contamination not pretending to know what every component means.  So long as there is positive equivalency between the components then the work is for me a philosophical and artistic success.