Constructed from church pews, broken apart with an axe, built up, set on fire, saved with the improvised application of snow, and blackened with a torch, Reckoning was created to reference three artifacts that live powerfully in American public memory: the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima, immortalized in bronze in the National US Marine Corps Memorial, architecturally in the National Marine Museum in Quantico, VA, and Emanuel Leutze’s famous painting Washington Crossing the Delaware. Each of these works inspires patriotism, nationalism, and exceptionalism. While Reckoning adopts the language of monumentality—a piece fixed in time—closer inspection reveals detritus and structural degradation: it is deconstructing itself, bursting from the plinth it is set upon, holding onto its pieces, and struggling to hold its flag high.
