STEPHEN WHISLER

The Fat Man at 11:02 AM, 2018, wood, wire and papier-mâché, room sized installation, sculpture is 60x60x126 inches suspended in space in The Tyranny of Objects.
My recent art practice consists of sculpture, drawings, performances and guerrilla art actions. I work in a variety of media, using the technique that is most appropriate for the project. Because of my childhood in a military family I am inexorably drawn to the subject of military power. It is a Hate / Love fascination that I cannot shake.
In my works on paper, military drones, atom bombs and missiles are drawn as iconic forms in large pastel renderings, drawn with my hands and fingertips, a kind of shamanesque response to the power and horror of these weapons. The drawings start as digital images on the computer that are then transferred to paper and are fleshed out with the most ancient “digital” technique, the fingerprint. Ultimately the final image is composed of thousands of fingerprints, like thousands of bits of evidence, evidence of the terrible potential of human creations.







