Megan Fritz

Artist Catalogue

Virtual Exhibition

Group Catalogue Site

Dis/Continuity (2020)

When is the exact moment that you realize something no longer works? When looking at something mechanical or electrical, it’s easy. It doesn’t start, there are no more lights, or alternatively there are lots of lights flashing. It no longer serves its function, it no longer does what it was specifically made to do, its purpose is lost. When it comes to relationships, with people, friends, family, sentimental objects, the line between functional and dysfunctional becomes blurred. We cling to something that no longer works, powering a machine that has exhausted its will to live. We might be able to pinpoint a moment, or a collection of moments when we realize that it has stopped working. But what is it that drives us to the moment when we loosen our grip and what we have been clinging to slowly dissipates and we are forced to let go?

I have always been fascinated with taking things apart and trying to figure out how they function, what the mechanisms are that drive them and why they were discarded if they no longer functioned in the way that they were supposed to. The question I have been pondering while creating the work for this exhibition, is if something can be functional amidst a time of dysfunction? Investigating objects has always been a way for me to make sense of something, but how can we make sense of a situation that seems slightly absurd?  

I came across a paper titled Absurdity, Incongruity and Laughter  by Bob Plant (Plant, 2009), in which Plant discusses absurdity through the view of Albert Camus and Thomas Nagel, and argues that “absurdity arises from the irreducible tension between our subjective and objective perspectives on life” (Plant, 2009:111). To me, this idea resonated with the clash of realities we are currently facing in a world which seems to have completely come to a halt and presented us with a reality that does not equate what we are used to. The fascination arises through the fact that we have been able to adjust, restructure and rebuild ourselves and our surrounding to fit into a new normal. Is it possible to find comfort in the strange when the world around us has become unrecognizable? Is it a way for us to make sense of a situation, or is the employment of imagination used as an escape mechanism?

Perpetuating their reconstruction by creating images, traces, proof that they exited, the strange little sculptures that I have created embody the idea of rebuilding. Taking something that no longer functions in its conventional manner, but instead of discarding it, utilizing the pieces to create something new, something that was better off for having been pulled apart and put back together.