@ VisArts through oct 10

VisArts (formerly Rockville Arts Place)
9300 Gaither Road, Gaithersburg, MD
Erwin Timmers Artist statement

In my work, I often confront the audience with an identifiable form in the shape of an everyday object. I prefer items that are so common, that you barely notice them anymore, which have been discarded and found again. I want to make the viewer stop and think twice by showing this object in a new and different light. At a second glance we often discover whole new aspects we didn’t catch the first time around. Sometimes we need a little reminder…

The traffic lights for this proposal are a perfect example of the everyday objects that we take for granted. We see them every day, and we often, unknowingly, develop a sort of love-hate relationship with them. Taking these object out of their usual surroundings and bringing them out of context catches the viewer’s eye and imagination, and brings up their emotional associations. Traffic lights are very symbolic for the choices we make and processes we go through on a daily basis.

Those choices and processes form the basis for my stories, which are all highly personal but also very universal. In previous traffic lights I have played out stories with references to love and hate, give and take, life and death, war and peace, and the acceptance of fate.

erwin@artbasement.com
Erwin Timmers
Co-Director Washington Glass School