Impressions (Portrayal) (2013-ongoing)
The images below are all made in camera, without any further image manipulation. I think of these as drawings.
The process itself sets up restrictions, much in the way that the processes of drawing can. Choosing any specific material (or tool) to draw with delimits the potential the work can have in terms of its dynamic range, which in turn defines the territory of the work. Of course, some of this territory is pre-ordained through (art)history; drawing with pencil will not have the same resonance as drawing with engine oil. In this case, I am drawing using a process – that of collusion.
The camera allows a manual HDR photograph to be taken – up to three photographs can be taken in one frame. I am working within the function to create entirely different imagery. There is a high degree of specificity in terms of subjects chosen, but the camera decides upon the readability of any one of those subjects within the algorithm. These images are the result of a camera struggling to place pixels within an algorithm targeted at delivering a high dynamic range for the user, and simply failing. It is the lack of attention to cropping and image depth that I am most drawn to here, and which appear to me as imbrications.
Framing the OtherFraming the Other(2015-16)
The digital montages made for under the working title Framing the Other are portraits, made by digitally painting one source into another. This process replicates the conceptual center of the work. The sources are on the one hand paintings, taken from the canon of European royalty tradition (1450-1750) and on the other, selections from the Indian Gallery by George Caitlin. The resulting portraits intentionally conflate historical chronology in an effort to externalize the exploitative ideology that results in the creation of the Indian Gallery. The American West is the furthest one can travel from the historical seat of power – Western Europe, and as such contained its own sense of otherness – those native to the west were therefore treated as otherworldly.
The European Royals, whose will toward colonialism ultimately framed the other in the image of Native Americans, arrogantly assumed rights to land well beyond the propriety of their inherited positions. Of course, it is the force of capital that created such a drive towards acquisition (of land), and was justified wholly by the rigid adherence to the functionaries of religious conversion: missionaries were the ruse through which Royal figures enacted colonialism. We have seen religion used throughout history to justify violence and capitalistic pursuit. These works are planned to include the use of empty baroque or rococo frames, ill fitting and therefore redolent of the status of the multivariate notion of the frame.
The Arena of Lost Faults (2010-11)
In this arena, laws are mutable. Laws are changed to satisfy desire. Desire exists strongly when the result is personal gain. Therefore, corporations are desirous. Where corporations have similar rights to people, laws can become useful tools rather than ethical guides or moral obligations; laws can be used as protection from accountability. When there is no accountability, there is no responsibility. When there is no responsibility, abuse occurs. When the abuses are ‘white collar crimes’ they are reified as mistakes. Mistakes made by corporations exonerate people working within them because they are protected by laws.
After a protracted, farcical inquiry, these mistakes are excused with ineffective fines, ultimately producing positive public relations: a corporation that evades the restrictions of legislation is effectively untouchable, above the law. Any admission of guilt is rejected, leaving responsibility suspended. Responsibility can be avoided because there is no accountability.
This is the Arena of Lost Faults.
Impressions (body language)(2012-4)
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