Artist Statement

Trevor Mercer

Searching for answers about the nature of energy and perception led Mercer to studies in particle physics , astronomy and cosmology. He uses urban and industrial materials to reinterpret sciences interpretation of these concepts , challenging the nature of perceived reality .

Having been born on an island in the North Atlantic Ocean Mercer was inspired by nature's energy displays , early on intuiting a powerful cosmic interconnectedness . Within this realm Mercer sees mankind not as an arbiter of the universe but as an enigmatic consequence inextricably bound up in it mysteries . Mercer uses scientific theory , models and explanations as a point of departure in his artistic journey . Through his work Mercer attempts to expose the polarization of instinct and intellect that marks our contemporary times .

Much traditional world sculpture acts as a point of contact ( or channeling device ) between two worlds ; the bush ( a world of invisible and chaotic nonlinear spirit forces) versus the village ( the relative security and predictability of a rectilinear human environment). Sculpture becomes a liminal window through which the spiritual disarray caused by man's activities are appeased .The artists work , in similar fashion , offers a glimpse of the spiritual , at the edge of mankind's rational , ordered Euro-Centered view of the Universe . Beyond this threshold lies the invisible chaotic disarray and untidiness that is the energy that drives our existence . "We are star stuff and there is no getting away from it". says Mercer . His works are an outward elemental thrusting , a kind of energized quantum diaspora .

Mercer's artistic vision moves outside boundaries established by the rationality and empiricism underpinning science . His surrealism is not dream imagery , hallucination or Freudian…nor is it wishful thinking . Mercer taps a more deep seated visceral wellspring , a knowledge base glimpsed by many only during rare moments of unmodulated consciousness . The artist says " I've heard intelligent life described as the universe talking to itself : asking questions ,finding answers ; trying to understand itself". Mercer listens to what the universe is saying. Committed , as well , to art making as process he describes his working process as a ritual trance-like communion with the universe . His are the forms of the inchoate energy blast that defined the cosmos , elemental and foundational to all universal existence .