Steven Randall

Region: West

My work examines the relationship between consumer, commodity, and transformation. Within a culture of feverish consumption and retinal impatience, I often make “fast” objects by the slowest means possible. The resulting sculptures, photographs, and installations represent overlooked objects rendered in symbolic materials.

Materiality is core to my practice. Specific sculptural ingredients have included a melted-down amalgam of contemporary aluminum tools cast in the form of an anvil; human breath used to preserve and chemically encrust precious photographs; and, most recently, discarded objects collected along the border between the Mexico and the United States to construct geodelike artifacts. In all my work, the common thread is a drive to reactivate materials in the effort to coalesce object, site, and narrative in physical form.