Artist, Kahlil Robert Irving: Arches & standards (Stockley ain’t the only one). Meissen Matter : STL matter is a sculpture made from wet material, glazed objects, multiple layers of enamel, image transfers, and luster.
Like many of my sculptures, it has recognizable objects smashed within an amassment of material that references asphalt or concrete. On the edge of the sculpture, there's a Budweiser logo next to a Coca-Cola logo, and on the flat surface of the edge of part of the work, there's a flat image of cigarette butts. The surface has images of protests of police brutality and Jason Stockley, a police officer being acquitted in 2017 for a murder he committed in 2011.
The sculptures were born as a means of communicating a relationship between historical and contemporary acts of violence and now the digital collages and sculptures are existing beyond violence in relationship to moments of survival—that I am able to live to tell tales for others who are not necessarily with us anymore.
I've been making things with clay since I was 12. I understand material is mined for industry, and has a complicated political history. Living in St. Louis—this city was built out of brick mined from the syncline, which is a large earth bed filled with red earthenware, fire clay, and underneath the two clay beds: coal, fuel.
Making things out of clay allowed me to collapse surface, form, time, imagery, text, content, all together in a new timeline. So my sculptures call to a history of production and they also solidify something of the present for the future.