Thomas Van Houten Installation Views

How does the body affect our emotional well-being?  How does the mind try to right itself after physical and emotional injury? In Van Houten's case, the painstaking and time-consuming construction of works of art is a way of trying to understand and express psychological damage and bodily harm.  A fleshy poinsettia-like flower illustrates the mechanics of emotional entrapment; an obsessively constructed sarcophagus evokes the suspension of both the body and disbelief; a human head in traction shows us how we try to hold fractured beliefs in place.  Instruments of entrapment and physical invasion are displayed in mandala-like formations on the walls. —Carolyn Miller