An Heir Apparent for H. R. Giger?

Killing Time (2007). By Jud Turner.

Hallowe'en - are we there yet?  In my run-up to this autumn festival, I have to thank my friend J. for coming across the American artist I'm mentioning in my post today.  The artist's name is Jud Turner.  He's a Gen Xer from Oregon, and he is  taking H. R. Giger's themes to a new, Post-Postmodern industrial level in his sculptures.  By Post-Postmodern in this case, I mean the juxtaposition of different time periods in a single existential narrative.  Turner's aim appears to be to create and somehow shockingly reconcile paradoxes.  He installs the ancient or the fossilized within industrial sculptural constructions and goes one step beyond Postmodern messages about disjointed, navel-gazing subjectivity.  This produces some visceral, jarring results, as with the fossilized junkyard fish trying to eat a dime in the sculpture, Greed Eater, below.  I haven't seen a better comment, anywhere, on the inflationary psychology that led to the Great Recession of  2008 to the present.  You can see more of Turner's sculptures on his homepage, here. 

Greed Eater (2010). By Jud Turner.

Greed Eater: close view (2010). By Jud Turner.

There's a touch of Steampunk here, more like Post-Apocalypse punk, here too, as Turner strips away the covers from our machinery and exposes the gears and nuts and bolts behind the virtual mythologizing of the Tech Revolution.  From Turner's artist's statement (here): "Quantum physics tells us that apparently solid objects are comprised of vast empty spaces, populated by tiny particles whose individual relationships create the whole. And that a single particle can exist in two separate places during one moment in time. I explore such dichotomies in my sculpture. Using welded steel and found objects, I create artwork which embraces opposites -- the tension between humans and nature; the perils of balancing biology and technology; or the combination of ancient fossils with modern machinery."  There is more information on Turner here.

Bio-Cycle (2008). By Jud Turner.