Bio

Eric Standley gave up his dreams of becoming a modernist in favor of maintaining a daily routine of compositional archeology. He sleeps on rare occasions between working in his studio in Blacksburg VA and contributing his compassionate outlook as a Professor of Studio Art at Virginia Tech. He received his B.F.A. from the Massachusetts College of Art and his M.F.A. from the Savannah College of Art and Design.

Eric is represented by Dinner Gallery of New York City, the Marta Hewett Gallery of Cincinnati, OH and Media Force of Tokyo Japan. He has exhibited in over one hundred and thirty museums and galleries around the world. His artworks are a part of the permanent collections of the Palace of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, the Scherenschnittmuseum, Vreden, Germany, and The Zupi Collection, São Paulo, Brazil.

 
 

Statement

Shifting paper’s function from a 2D platform for information to a seemingly impractical building material for cut 3D compositions is not an act of rebellion, but more an accurate reflection of my tendency to over complicate things. Likewise, the efficiencies gained from the tools I use in the studio are exchanged for an obsessive method of conceptualizing with overt intentionality. I cut paper using a laser to create dimensional-crossing layered compositions. Thousands of details for each layer are drawn with a gaming mouse using CAD software the same way key-frame animations are created, only instead of time I am negotiating space. The compositions I create are informed by pattern-based interpretations of the intricacy, fragility, and vulnerability shared across all life forms. Translating these patterns into tangible objects without specific cultural or illustrative familiarity is a compulsion toward transcendental otherworldliness.

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Paradox of  faith

I like the thought that faith itself is a unifying bond across humanity. Within each individualized need to believe there are patterns of commonality that have the potential to transcend our differences and unite us by way of human familiarity. I see patterns in mythologies across cultures, in the rituals of faith in religions, and in the objects and spaces that we have chosen to hold sacred. They are found in the theories of DNA packing, and in the self-similar replication of fractals. Faith is not a tradition, but rather an intrinsic consciousness that exists across humanity. The utopian dreams of modernism were reckless fantasies of platonic idealism that often excluded the complexities of humanness. The essence of life is a perception of existence, witnessed by individualized perspectives. We are connected by our surroundings, our overlapping existences, and through the archetypical pattens that occupy our collective sub-conscious. Believing in something larger than ourselves includes the recognition of our shared fragility.