Transreal Objects

The transreal refers to objects or experiences that exist in extended form, stretching from the mind into reality. In terms of semiotics, I am conflating the sign, signified, and signifier into a single thing. This is impossible. But, the idea of the transreal object helps to create works that embody authentic experiences of emotion, memory, and thought rather than simply illustrating or being indexical to them.

To support this effort, I research the sciences of perception, alternative experiences of reality, altered states, Western and non-Western cosmovisions, and ideas that produce ontological shock (e.g., the ‘highly strange’ or uncanny). A transreal object is not bound by time. It can exist both in the unconscious mind and our waking world at once. For my purposes, an "object" really refers to any particular thing that has the ability to exist in waking life.

Transreal Art results from wielding the principle of the transreal object as a scale on which to weigh the work as I create it. Does the work truly embody that aspect of my internal world I am trying to extend into life, or is it simply a pastiche of my interests and influences? If the soul of the artwork weighs more than a feather, it cannot get into heaven.