Statement
In my work I explore relationships; the relationship between material, shape, color, gesture and mark-making. These formal explorations potentially speak to relationships with self, each other, and what we call reality. Traditional notions of collage & craft, alternative bookmaking, sculpture, and design merge. My aim is for the process of making to be evident at the surface, the repetitive action of my hand apparent. Works reflect through-lines of self, contain the drift and accumulation of time, construct sacred space, bind future and past. Works exist as mementos, recordings, or totems. My job is to activate the materials of memory, divining new runes and visual emergency response. I am constantly zooming in and out of visual micro and macrocosms. Maximalist tendencies and minimalist desires are strategically negotiated with each action. I seek the tension between blithe rhythms and decay, connected to a lineage of queered and coded abstract language. Visual poems point to the in-between spaces and places, and what is learned there. Ephemeral and continually repurposed, these are reflective chronicles of emotional expenditure. My artwork is evidence of existence; vestiges of what was, projections of what may be.
Bio
Originally from West Virginia, Craig Auge is currently based in Kansas City, Missouri. He has exhibited through the U.S. in venues such as Site:Brooklyn and Sulfur Studios in Savannah, GA. Local venues include Kiosk Gallery, Vulpes-Bastille, InterUrban Arthouse and Leedy-Voulkos Art Center. He has participated in numerous collaborative projects, including Telephone: An International Arts Experiment, and The Billboard Creative Q1 Show in Los Angeles. His art has appeared in numerous publications including Cut Me Up, The Hand Magazine and New American Paintings. He has held residencies at Elsewhere Museum in Greensboro, NC, ON::VIEW in Savannah, GA, Charlotte Street Foundation in Kansas City, and Interurban Arthouse in Overland Park, Kansas. He also operates an independent curatorial project Lodger.