Tape Series
4-1-11
Smile
A Childhood Spent in Planes Without Doors
Black Holes
In this series I have explored the transparency and density of both imagery and perception. To engage these subtleties, I have experimented with image transfer processes and recycled materials (specifically VHS tape from a security camera) to create works that engage the inquisitive and curious.
This material has been used in the first set of drawings, Smile, as a seductive surface that changes between being reflective and void. The ephemeral imagery of an observing security camera is derived from the content of the material and is altered by the viewer’s interaction. This imagery questions how our quality of life is affected/effected by being constantly, mostly unknowingly, monitored.
In the second body of work, A Childhood Spent in Planes Without Doors, I have used the tape in a more playful, abstract fashion. Here, I am questioning the relationship between narrative and mystery. The subject is a fusion of recognizable forms and those that are more open to interpretation. The title and imagery hint at my earliest memories and the sense of weightlessness that accompanies them.
In the third group, Black Holes, it is the unkown I am most interested in provoking the viewer to contemplate. These “black holes” represent the great enigmas of infinity and eternity. The title implies questions regarding the relationship of space/time and concepts like the “event horizon.”
This series is one facet of a larger idea of the art/life experience as being a kind of phenomenological gestalt, but it goes further to ask other questions about the world around us. What is the cost of constant surveillance? What is the connection between playful curiosity, perception, and the way we create abstract fictions? Ultimately, what is the intrigue of the mysterious and why is the unknown the beginning and end of all great questions? In pondering these inquiries, it is my intention to reveal a hidden aspect of how the viewer perceives and experiences the world around him or herself.