Alana Koscove

In a time where human failure is no longer a question, but an imminent certainty, I use my practice to grapple with questions of ecological loss. What does it mean to accept a death that we have yet to see fully realized in the world? What space do we currently occupy, waiting and yet still destroying? Primarily through analogous relationships, I try to grant viewers an understanding of our own yearnings. Often interceding with my own renderings of the sublime, my work utilizes scale, distance, and textural plasticity to open up an experiential moment for the viewer. Confronting an object in space, I intend viewers to ask themselves what is at loss and what we so desire.

My interest in the potentiality of life forms to resist or be subject to devastation prompts investigation into different material starting points. Taking wax, plasticy tar gel, and decrepit living forms as origins, I explore their physicality to alter our perception of materials in their environments. Driven by a sense of care and respect for the materials in my hand, I question my precarious feelings towards these substances, examining the varying processes of equalizing, deferring to, or exerting control over my materials.

I aim to indulge in emptiness: ultimately using it, and thus loss itself, as a key medium. A small box floating in the corner, a nearly imperceptible shift in a found branch to an artifice–my work projects a quiet, affective tone that sits patiently and lets the space remain void.

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