About John Felix Arnold

Artist Statement

I grew up watching nature break apart brick walls and concrete sidewalks like a slow elemental sculptor in the urban landscape of the American south. Twisting green forms sprung through cracks creating sensuous offerings that defied industrial containment. My interdisciplinary work explores relationships between rigidity and fluidity, tension and release. I’m fascinated by the shift that occurs when denial finally gives way to surrender, where the porousness of acceptance can become a place of transformative abundance. What does the residue left from a vital transformation look like? How can catalysts for acceptance be visualized? How can I create new spaces of emergence from moments of surrender? What happens when we radically reimagine oppressive mythologies that have shaped society and embody different ways of moving forward? 

I often use found materials, as they carry records of time and memory. They lay bare visual markers of wear, work, and neglect. Objects imply certain histories, meanings, and purposes which position them in charged ways within society. By combining, altering, and marking on charged objects and materials, and re-presenting them formally, I embed language that creates a psychological and spiritual mark. This catalyzes change in perception while awakening memories and visceral bodily connections. These objects and materials develop relationships with one another, myself, and the viewer, ritualizing reimaginings of mythology and embedded histories, activating ways to consider the (social) body from a point of contemplative curiosity and radical renewal. The works are meant to evoke a bodily response in their tactility where the body at work leaves a residue, while the viewer’s body is asked to take part in the experience of the work itself at times. 

Bio

John Felix Arnold (b. 1980, Durham, NC), is an American contemporary artist whose multi-disciplinary practice employs a wide range of media, with a focus on the intersection of drawing, sculpture, installation, sound and movement research. His work explores themes of movement and the body, critical history, myth making, material histories and use, alchemy, and personal narrative. He received a BFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY (02’), and is currently in the MFA Studio Art Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (25’). He has exhibited and presented at SFMOMA, Nasher Museum of Art, B.R.I.C. House, The Luggage Store Gallery, Anchorlight, Aggregate Space, and Spes-Lab Experimental Art Space Tokyo. He has been in residence with Duke University’s Rubenstein Visiting Artist Program, Cassilhaus, and the Peter Bullogh Foundation. He has received a Southern Futures Fellowship, U.N.C. Wilson Library Incubator Award, U.N.C. Southern Oral History Program Artist Award, Duke University Arts Grant, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Covid 19 Emergency Grant, and Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs Public Art Grant. His work has been collected by the Duke University Rubenstein Arts Center, The U.N.C. Chapel Hill Sloane Art Library, and Kai Kai Ki Ki Ltd. He is a former contributing writer for the Coastal Post, and has written for Border Crossing Magazine.