Kyle William Butler

Gallery Affiliations: Nina Freudenheim Gallery

Region: Northeast

Website: http://kylebutlerart.com

City / State: Buffalo, NY

I utilize structure and debris to build visual metaphors for the relationship between control and uncertainty. I construct these metaphors with architectural imagery, as architecture shares a common language with that of systems and control in general. Architecture functions as a physical barrier that separates maintained space from fallowing space. The push and pull between these spaces reveals the built environment to be a process, something that is constantly becoming. Accordingly, I focus on the building and the breaking rather than the built and the broken.

While I am interested in the physical barrier function of structure, I am more concerned with its role as a symbolic barrier between order and disorder. In this sense, the gesture of control inherent in architecture can be equated with the organizational habits and coping methods that comprise the personal conduct of the individual.

My work examines the role of blight and renewal in the development of the urban built environment while also relating these issues to the more individual struggle between control and uncertainty.