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Light as both medium and content... I have long been interested in light, space and perception; my installations often provide occasions for
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Light as both medium and content...
I have long been interested in light, space and perception; my installations often provide occasions for de-stabilization and re-orientation. To achieve this, I make architectural and environmental interventions - using light and reflective surfaces, by inverting subject and object or figure and ground, and by reversing up and down, exterior and interior. I prefer to create these installations in nominal and transitional spaces; those places in our built environments which we usually ignore, overlook or simply fail to see in our rush to get from one place or appointment to another: corners, hallways, stairwells, ceilings, floors, blank walls...
These concerns date from my upbringing in Southern California; first as a child seeing a sky nearly uninterrupted by skyscrapers, and by spaces such as Los Angeles' famous Bradbury Building, first visited on a childhood field trip. Later, in college, these interests became a formal and conceptual investigation upon encountering the works of artists such as Robert Irwin and James Turrell (both at one time California-based artists as well as pioneers of the Light and Space movement).
My explorations of architectural spaces, light, and observation bring me almost inevitably to an interest in perspective drawing and its history. Perspective as we know it from the Renaissance until now is a system of representation that could be described as a fictional depiction of perceived space. Most recently I have been drawn to the engravings of the Dutch painter and architect, Jan Vredeman de Vries, whose work helped disseminate the perspective theories of Leone Battista Alberti and Albrecht Dürer. De Vries' depictions of architectural spaces in perspective are fantastical - almost always empty of people, the buildings he imagines or represents are nearly surreal.
This brings me to some of my other interests. Like many artists, there are a number of ideas, concepts, and images that "live in my head" at most times. One of those is the idea of the sublime - that arresting, overwhelming and, usually, momentary combined feeling of beauty and horror theorized by so many philosophers. Another longstanding passion is for speculative fiction - science fiction, fantasy, and horror, all of which pose the "what if?" questions. For the past ten years, I've been particularly interested in both the fiction and critical essays of Samuel R. Delany who imagines worlds both past and future where our "normal" categories of human identity and behavior are called into question.
These interests all form tangential rather than direct relationships to one another. The installations and drawings included in this show are some of the results of my placing these divergent thoughts together.
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