We saw this at Artspace on Friday Aug 1, 2008.
On the brink of disaster
By Takaaki Iwabu, Staff Photographer
A man is watching television. Behind him, a girl is drowning.
He is not going to rescue her, at least for now, because he is in the comfort of his E-Z chair and distracted by a TV show. The flooded river entering his house is filled with garbage and household materials.
That is the scene sculptor Eileen Doktorski installed at Artspace in Raleigh. Her mixed-media work with painted ceramic casts and found objects narrates an urgency of an endangered environment and the evidence of a hyper-consuming culture.
“The piece really requires the viewer's imagination to complete it,” says Doktorski, an assistant professor of sculpture at Utah State University. “At that heightened moment, there is still a possibility of change: The man can get up and rescue the child and possibly rescue his environment.”
“Oblivion,” which opened Friday at part of the First Friday Gallery Walk, is a product of Doktorski's one-month stint as the 2008 Artspace summer artist-in-residence. It will be displayed through Sept. 8.
