Every breath, a dying star
Paul Kaptein is an artist based in Perth, Western Australia.
Kaptein’s work explores the Now as a remix of past and future potentialities and as such opens up new ways to consider the present.
For Kaptein, a sculptor and self taught woodcarver, wood suggests the temporal trajectories of time (past, present, future) that inform the conceptual nature of his work. He sees woodcarving as an ancient craft that provides a counterpoint to contemporary concerns and the immediacy of contemporary society, and the perfect medium through
which to explore the Heideggerian idea that technology removes us from ourselves.
Gaps in the wood suggest matter expanding, collapsing and reforming as well as disrupted data streams, silences and ultimately the empty space through which matter emerges.
Underlying many of Kaptein’s works there is an uneasy tension between and juxtaposition between a kind of spirituality and technological intervention - all deciphered through a wry, dark humour.
all photos by Kingsley Burton
