Big Art vs Big People

For several decades, NYC art has had a monumental scale, sometime dwarfing the viewer.  The experience sought by the artist must overwhelm the ambient environment, and in NYC the ambient environment is big and loud.  My art places the viewer in the larger frame, looking down.  My art lets the viewer assume a god pose.  But really, aren't we practically godlike in our global footprint?  Whole species will live and die (mostly die) by our whim.  The geochemistry of the planet itself is being altered on a scale unimaginable not 60 years ago, and some of us are worried while some of us are whistling on the way to bank.  The bank may not survive, but those with mountains of "money" in it think they will.  The scale of my sculptures allows the viewer to feel the distance and the comfort.  But in fact, it's all one world, and we live and expire together.  So like all the rest of the art in Chelsea and beyond, mine is a lie.

Charlie Olson