Installation

Tonight was final critique for the semester. Here is a snapshot after getting five of the seven drawings to my installation in place. It is not lit so I am eager to explore the possibilities of lighting. 

Frontal installation view (from my iphone-)

Statement of Intent

The human face is read as if it were a written language. Removing the expression leaving a blank stare lends the viewer to imagine the significance of the person drawn. I began to break down the face further, removing the complete image into sectioned planes. Confronted with rearranged detail and various planes of translucent architectural paper, the viewer is encouraged to walk around the work, peer into, imagine and reconstruct the identity of the image broken down before them. In the same way we encounter others, we must peer through what we do not know and construct an understanding of identity.

My drawings are a paradoxical mix of hyperrealism and abstraction. An isolated encounter with the installed drawings becomes ethereal. Immediately confronted with the contour of the face, the installation becomes an experience of the viewer’s self along with a presence foreign to oneself. In the absence of immediate subjective expression, the installation elicits interest without allowing identification. A close observation of the drawings communicates an obscure and abstract experience of celestial debris. Excessive layered details contribute to drowning out the consistency of the representation of something resembling a hallucinatory projection.

The installation represents both assemblage and disassemblage of identity and our understanding of it. Through exquisite draftsmanship, the installed drawings question principles of identity and recognition as well as standard associations with perception and idealization. I question the boundaries of our reality by offering a dislocation to the understanding of our physical self.