Tuk Vaughankraska is an emerging artist from Bozeman, Montana. A sculptor and a painter, he works with a variety of paint mediums and textiles. His intention is to create artifacts that mark time and space in culture. Vaughankraska sees his work as making an argument about agency, exercising agency to change surroundings in material world. "It is part of being a human being, the giving of artifact as opposed to receiving."
Vaughankraska's position on art as a commodity is that products can be art, but art isn't inherently a product. "The true strength of art is as a cultural artifact. It's a reflection of culture." Vaughankraska works within the Platonic theory of art, as a copy of a copy. "There's an ugly potential in art, making copies, as prints, to sell crosses a line. Prints as reproductions do this. Art is a cultural artifact, not a production line consumer item."
Vaughankraska's work is truly simulacrum. In this case, a representation or imitation of the artist's concept. His process is the act of trying to do justice to the original intention while balancing the new reality of the final form. "First there's an idea, what to paint, with all references to Platonic theory there are first and second copies that happen in a matter of seconds. The third copy requires time and transforms previous copies into itself as art. In this phase I'm trying to do justice to the original intention while balancing the new reality of the final copy."
Sculpture differs in process from painting. It requires making schematics in the round and planning for the form as the surface becomes a form. "The 3D form of a surface needs a schematic, to design the structure." Vaughankraska's process proceeds with a variety of relationships in mind: hard and soft, plush and pokey, toucher and touched, tosser and tossed, giver and receiver; a major consideration is the play between a piece and the viewer. In his sculptural works he states: "I want the work to be handled responsibly. There are prickly corners. There are lumps and edges to be mindful of. Physical embrace of most of these objects might result in unexpected consequences. Careful consideration regarding body language and form typically dictates how you aim to embrace or establish a relationship with an individual, I want my work to be understood as personified in the same way. Ideally the pieces fall on a spectrum which runs from yearning to repellent with regards to touch".
His paintings have their own regard as to being both repellent and compelling. Cartoon-like images derived from popular culture create this same sense of tension on the picture plane. Massive structural canvas constructs contain entire worlds of psychological warfare, trying to make sense out of the endless insanity we face in our world today. Vaughankraska's work is an organized whole that can only be perceived as more than the sum of its parts.
