Artist Statement

Being, nothing more… is an attempt to simplify and define existence as a specific and limited amount of calculable space. The sculpture is an homage to Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. The boulder form was created by using CNC technology to mill a 3D scan of a rock to the exact volume of the artist’s body, found to be 5,616.188 cubic inches using air displacement plethysmography, at age 38. The video footage was captured during a Sisyphean performance in Tokyo, Japan in 2018.

“The world is human. We can see the very particular position of consciousness: being is everywhere, opposite me, around me; it weighs down on me, it besieges me, and I am perpetually referred from being to being; that table which is there is being and nothing more; that rock, that tree, that landscape—being and nothing else. I want to grasp this being and I no longer find anything but myself.”
– Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness

Artist Bio

Jason J Ferguson is an installation and performance artist originally from Washington D.C. He spent his formative years in Baltimore where he received his BFA from Towson University and continued his studies at the University of Delaware where he completed his MFA in 2006. Ferguson has exhibited internationally including exhibitions in Japan, Germany, Argentina, Brazil, Albania, Canada, and the Netherlands; as well as nationally in Brooklyn, Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Kansas City, Cincinnati, and Detroit. Notable venues include the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MoCAD), the Delaware Contemporary, the Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia, Brooklyn’s BRIC, and the International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago. He was an Artist in Residence at Elsewhere Artist Collaborative in 2007 and New Riddles and Constellations, the Netherlands in 2008. His artwork has been featured in a variety of publications including SCULPTURE magazine, Hyperallergic, SciArt Magazine, Artifizz, the Chicago Art Review, the 3D Additivist Cookbook, and more. Ferguson currently resides in Michigan where he is a Professor in the School of Art & Design at Eastern Michigan University.

https://www.jasonjferguson.com/