Statement from the artist:

The Gross Misconduct Chronicles is a descent into total mayhem. I wanted to take the concept of a troubled artist experiencing psychological freefall, and grapple with it, molest it, then squeeze it for all its juicy details. And boy, did I squeeze that motherfucker good!!

The characters you’ll encounter in this exhibition are the product of me exploiting my own mental illness and emotional turmoil, sure, but they tell a much greater story, a story of repetitive abuse and self-destruction originating from an external monstrosity. I guess it’s pretty obvious now that the brutality directed at us from simply existing within this hellscape is extreme, and also sneaky; it gets inadvertently mirrored inside of us, to the point where the abuse is coming from all angles, simultaneously (from the outside-in, from the inside-out, from the inside-in, etc.). And to top it all off, we get gaslit and brainwashed into believing that we, as individuals, are to blame for our own suffering and the suffering of others. So really my inspiration comes from the recognition of this truly suffocating cycle of cruelty and my desire to manipulate it into a tool for self-expression and empowerment, and of course, share with you so that we can all eventually experience collective liberation. To put it more plainly: this artwork is the outcome of horrendous abuse, but I abused the artwork too, horrendously. Still, the artwork also abused me, and boy, did I get angry! And in the flames of this back-and-forth, toxic relationship, I remembered that this is exactly what the capitalist, traditionalist system would want, me getting so caught up in my own grief and pain that the larger horrors go largely unnoticed. So I said, “Fuck them!! Let’s use our suffering as a way to build connections and add strength to the revolution! ...” Sadly, we can only do that when our suffering isn’t completely debilitating and numbing ... which is ... not so often, let's be honest.

So that got me thinking:

The Gross Misconduct Chronicles describe a condition. The condition is one of psychological violence, ambiguity and absurdity – a rapid cycling from a place of enthusiastic, avant-garde anger, an internal upheaval attributed to one’s own urgent frustration with the state of the now, and the state of themselves (or lack thereof) within the now, to a place of all-encompassing numbness and hopelessness. The speed at which our internal pendulums swing from one extreme to the next, side-by-side, from way down here to way up there, creates a mood of its own: a gray-brown smear of sorts, of roots, of faces and creatures hiding in the shadows of overlapping branches in the forest at night, and

Then suddenly, a dim porch light flickered on a house in the distance.

Which got me thinking:

The Gross Misconduct Chronicles describe a journey. The journey is the product of the condition – the daily, hourly, minutely drastic mood shifts which can feel so debilitating on a small scale, can be examined more authentically as one large, unsettling storm, a Hurricane, with the benefit of post-traumatic perspective and empathy. With the understanding that we function as the prey of our moods, like birds inside cages, this collection aims to rationalize the internal warfare of mood and other mental disorders without succumbing to the normalcy of a stable mind; the work is dog-headedly denying common sense the opportunity to deprive the bizarre and the unusual of absolute reason. If we have felt it, even for a brief moment, even without the slightest possibility of understanding it or communicating it, it is real. The Gross Misconduct Chronicles ring true because they happened, because they are real.

Which got me thinking:

Do not let them tame your beast. Modern society is really trying to tame the beast inside of each of us — the beast of creativity, imagination and abnormality. We are so much brighter than this shitty gridlock capitalist hellscape that is being forced upon the masses. I hate to go too much into symbolic politics, but ... (!!) If you are like me, often feeling like a broken bird inside a cage, we need to get really inventive with the ways we fight back. That means (1) murder yourself (metaphorically), sacrifice your ego — the bird handlers HATE dead birds, so I say FUCK ‘EM! That means (2) lay some fucking eggs, the state of the art industry is so shockingly heartless and dull, which is why I say DO NOT MAKE ART if you’ve got nothing to say, and if you HAVE something to say, MAKE FUCKING ART BITCH! That means (3) work on mastering your bird song. We might feel isolated inside our cages, but our cages are not isolated! Communicate with the birds around you in ways the system cannot comprehend: make art, choose radical acceptance, be real and raw about the strange, and especially broken ways we feel, applaud your own complexity, form bonds, and build strategies for a freer future.

Birds born in a cage believe flying is an illness. And you better fucking believe that that can be applied directly to mental illness. In a culture that makes individuals struggling with mental illness (which is ALL OF US, by the way) suffer way more than they need to, and further categorize and isolate, and even CAPITALIZE off our pain, (and yes, INSIDE THE ART WORLD TOO), it’s more important than ever to show the people around us just how high we can fly, show them that there is a massive misunderstanding of how the general public perceives mental illness, a massive miscommunication of how we’re taught to handle it, and that the change begins right now within every one of us. I know for a fact that neurodivergence is such a powerful gift and source of revolutionary transformation. Don’t suffer more than you have to, but when you are suffering, use it for good. What you feel is real.