Biography:

Erik Fabian (b. 1976) is an artist and producer working in live performance, installation, and conceptual art.

Erik was born in Warren, Ohio and grew up in Charlottesville, Virginia. He lived in Olympia, Washington for 5 years, where he attended the Evergreen State College. In 2000, he founded the performance festival “BigShowCity” in Olympia, WA.

Erik then lived in Chicago, Illinois for 5 years and completing a Masters of Fine Arts degree at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He now resides in Brooklyn, New York.

Erik has curated several shows in partnership with Stephanie Pereira.

Erik is a long time meditator.

Statement:

My work nestles into spatial, social, aesthetic, psychological and spiritual nooks. I make performances with found objects and precious metals, create relationships and history between people and objects and then revisit and rearrange these systems in formats like structured improvisations, durational performances, rituals, games, theater, interviews and installation. I work both collaboratively and as a solo performer.

I write commentary and create performance responses to performance work as advocacy for performance and sustainable art practice. I have also recording a series of dialogues as research, collaboration, and as a performance of self-reflection within a community. I present these documents via my website www.ErikAndTheAnimals.com.

Thematically, my work currently explores the kinds of value and currencies that are exchanged in performance art while continuing to integrate animal metaphors and my experience with meditation into my work.

I question how different ways of framing value influence the quality of attention that an audience lends to a performance. As an artist living in the United States, I am intrigued how one can create a sustainable performance practice in this country and am addressing the market failure that haunts time-based and ephemeral art within a contemporary Western capitalist economy.