Ishmael Randall Weeks' practice encompasses site-specific installations, sculpture and video to works on paper. In these works, issues of urbanization, transformation, regeneration, escape, collapse and nomadic existence have been predominant. While the work in the drawing studio serves as a means for a more intimate exploration of these issues, the foundation of his larger scale work lies in the alteration of found and recycled materials and environmental debris, often on site (including such source materials as books and printed matter, empty tins, old tires, bicycles, boat parts and building construction fragments) that are often altered to create sculptural objects and architectural spaces. These works take the visual form of functional objects while stripping them of their productivity to address notions of labor and utility, forcing an examination of our understanding of culturally specific forms while simultaneously exploiting and adapting their particular codes and associations.
