about
Shane Charles is a sculptor working with steel, clay, and timber to examine how bodies register time through material consequence. His work uses somatic activation—breath, pressure, labor—to initiate chemical and structural processes that continue without the body present. Corrosion, fracture, and load function as evidentiary systems rather than symbols, allowing material history to carry record forward.
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This work treats the body as an initiating variable rather than a subject. Breath, pressure, and labor introduce change into material systems—oxidation, fracture, deformation—that continue independently of the body’s presence. Agency transfers quickly from performer to matter.
The sculpture records outcome rather than action. Viewers encounter the work after the initiating event has passed, reading alteration as evidence. In this delayed condition, witness becomes forensic and material functions as an archive—holding memory, labor, and trace as structural consequence rather than representation.
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contact details
studioshanecharles@gmail.com