Charles "Charlie" Corriea - Motion designer, fabricator, and artist

Base toy Designed by Ten Times Tiger for a group show of customized “Fortune Cats”. Mixed media assemblage and found object.

Description:
The artists places the lucky cat in the context of a god of fortune statue which towers above its ambivalent populous below. Statues of bygone military might surround and guard the statue who has been adorned with other irrelevant and misguided symbols as time has worn by. Behind the statue sits a secured area the purpose of which is not fully clear to the outside observer. what lays inside the statue is still kept secure and old parts of the statue and plaza are kept in disuse there. the parts that keep it held up can been seen here and just on the periphery hinting at the truly man made aspect of this “divine being”

Artists Statement:
C. R. Corriea 05/06/2018

When I was a boy around nine or 10 my father served as a Eucharistic minister at St. Cecillia’s Catholic Church in San Francisco. This was a large ornate building with gold leaf and lots of lavish embellishment. Since my father had to be behind the alter, I too got to wander behind the huge domed chapel. There I found the structures that held it up. Beams, electrical boxes and iron. The constructions required to create the edifice of anything people put faith into is usually forgotten and hidden. As people we tend to forget these structures, not just in architecture but in our world and in ourselves. People do this to that which we believe in. Most forget about the internal structures of things, the skeletons under our skins; but this ugly frame work is not only part of our beliefs but the solid truth by which everything is hung. This work conveys this message. As with most of my work, the divine is in the bones, the cables, the girders and gables that make up our world. I stand in awe of it.