If there's one thing I know, it's that I think I know more than I do. It's easy to assume the knowledge structures and belief systems of one's culture, the pretense of which is seldom questioned by those who are immersed in them. In my experience, the systems of society, the often invisible structures upon which cultures are built, become more (but not entirely) apparent to people who do not fit squarely into them.

In my recent work, I have cast off the familiar role of the outsider and become a character in the complex web of culture, a web in which my desire to believe in and identify with some idea is always curbed by the nagging question of whether any one of man's systems is better than another. In a world where meaning and value are in constant flux,   humanity is cursed by an absurd longing for some unattainable, mythical truth. But rather than make pictures of a world where nothing is real, I wholeheartedly join the absurdity of the human quest for meaning, simultaneously reveling in its humor and mourning its melancholy.

Alex Golden

November, 2007