It is quite impossible for me to avoid the political, examinations of otherness, the demolition of borders both real and perceived, the amazing beauty of strangeness.

To this end I am interested in schema, that script we all carry around in our heads telling us what to do, and how to react to repeated cultural happenings. And because I am interested in this, I am also interested in, well, not this. What I seek to do then, is to challenge that schema in a way that creates an entirely foreign experience.

Endlessly, I am intrigued by the idea that we do things without fully meaning to. That our actions are not thought out in such a manner that we live fully conscious of each moment, but rather that we react and then later reflect. And the idea that our reactions to things are a shared experience based on some made up word called “culture” is at the core of my work. That we respond to things based on a script in our head, which, more often than not, does not reflect our actual experience at that present moment. This of course raises the question of what is “actual?” My work is an attempt to address that question.

Raymond Gaston is an artist with a studio practice based in Los Angeles. His art has appeared in the Main Museum, the Brand Gallery, Dandelion and Burdock, Estudio Nomada, and Lunch Ticket. He is a published author, his fiction appearing in Commonline Journal, Five2One Magazine, and the Evening Street Press. He has as well, written numerous scripts which have been turned into short films, web series’, and documentaries, and is in the process of having two of his feature film scripts produced. As a director he made The Man That Worked a festival short, two web series’, music videos and a documentary. As an actor he has been in numerous films.