REID SANCKEN

Reid Sancken is a contemporary sculptor and installation artist. He has exhibited nationally, including Franconia Sculpture Park, University of Chicago, and Virginia Commonwealth University; he is currently an artist in residence at Var Gallery in Milwaukee, WI. Sancken’s mixed-media objects are inspired by genetic hoarding tendencies, watching too much television, and getting up to no good. He has a MA in Sculpture from Eastern Illinois University and currently lives and works in Milwaukee, WI.

My works function as a material diary, documenting my curiosity about my environment through discarded objects. The status of these objects are not elevated, rather preserved in their unwanted state already void of their prescribed functions. They become building blocks with which to improvise, a process which inherently favors intuitive invention over prescribed formulas. 

My sculptures are informed by direct and active gestures merging the banal into mashed-up figures stuck in a repulsive transitional state. A finessed material investigation and subtle textures reward the patient observer. The tragic assemblage forms question concepts of value, beauty, and capital. 

My works offer three sides to subjecthood: the objects’ implied origins, my mental map of discovering and processing the materials, and the viewer’s decoding considering their intimate interactions with my disposable material library. 

Recent works are about healing from trauma, mind-altering sobriety, slowing down, and, the work it takes to be kind to yourself.