Artist Statement

At once searing and personal, Andrew J. McCauley’s work takes the corrosive effects that

multiple sclerosis has on the body and mind and compares such jarring contradictions to global

sociological trends in media as its subject.

Atrophy and the decline of the central nervous systems are formalized as it incorporates the

human figure into a narrative landscape that acts as a metaphor for the erosion of harmony.

Characters are caught in the experience of nervous and circulatory system failure and,

ultimately, a total loss of mobility. Each is surrounded by the deconstruction and fractioning of

archetypal memories and physical functionality. The playful, intentionally unsophisticated

characters act as a balance to lighten the heavy connotation of their decline.

The practice of carving into the surface and mixing gasoline with paint pigments, then igniting it,

give the work an aggressive and automatic feel. The stains left after ignition call to mind blood

vessels or neuron synapses underneath the skin.

The work provides a dark, inverted assessment of a body transcending into a state of complete

system failure.

Wealth and power, having an immense affect on how a social body is framed, spotlights the

debilitating effects on its own system.

The viewer is immersed within a microcosmic/macrocosmic landscape of a dilapidating body.

Multi-layered projections, animated digital imagery and kinetic sculptures add to the dimension

of how we interact with a two-dimensional surface.

“Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” -Theodosius Dobzhansky.