Amanda Small

All Truths Wait in All Things | 2013

My current work considers perceptions of the present moment and the remote cosmos to address how we relate with and respond to the environment, and to present new ways of looking at the world around us. Ontological inquiry is the origin of my reflections on the nature of our world as well as the existence of “universes” parallel to our reality.

I am exploring the interval between the finite and infinitesimal, as well as humanity’s relationship to the universe. I create installations that combine mundane materials and ambiguous imagery that can be concurrently microscopic and stellar, conveying multiple dimensions and perspectives. I choose to consider each piece as an “environment-system”, and part of a greater “collection” or collective experience.

In this work, I reflect on ideas of multiple worlds and the unidentified zones situated between fiction and reality and how we experience the world around us in relation to our identity, both as an individual, and as a collective. The work symbolizes a view of the world as more vast and complex, more unpredictable and colorful, than what our comprehension, here and now, would let us know.

I am interested in the psychological connections made between tessellating patterns and symbols based on the implied meaning associated with collections of patterns, maps, and symbols. These thoughts were “materialized” in the concept of infinity – described by the indefinite and complex nature of the physical world – as well as in the suggestion that a constant and eternal movement pre-exists in all things.

My work explores the relationship between physical place and intangible experience. It emphasizes the idea that movement is an intrinsic and permanent flux existing in all things, as well as being the sign and measure of space, and time, and memory. I use patterning, and symbology to point to an underlying interconnectedness and a shared structure.

By looking with curiosity at the landscape and merging rational and technological order with notions of beauty and the transcendental, I use technological methods to visualize aspects of the natural world, taking micro and macro views of the earth, cells, satellite mapping, topographies and systematic patterning and translate that information into installations that contemplate the meaning of “home” or “place”.