I'm Looking for You...
I'm looking for you... Exhibition Overview at Hamiltonian Gallery in Washington DC Summer 2015
Luxe Alienator (The Gruen Fallacy)
Media: Marble tile, cast bronze, wood, cement board, water + fountain pump, light
Size: 54" x 72" x 24"
Date: 2015
Holocene Tablet
Media: FGR cement, brass, glass, resin bonded marble and sand
Size: 36" x 36" x 1.5"
Date: 2015
Dividing Line
Media: Digital print on vinyl mesh, modified brass stanchions, curtains
Size: 84" x 156" x 20"
Date: 2015
Misconnection
Media: Brass intercom, sound recording
Size: 6.5" x 4.5" x 2.25"
Date: 2015
Window H (So close, so far)
Media: Digital print on transparency film, LED lightbox
Size: 24" x 24"
Date: 2015
Exhibition Statement:
The Aposiopesis (the ellipsis) that trails behind the exhibition title - I’m looking for you - with its series of dots reveals a sense of longing, of something missing or the inability to finish the thought. Through this phrasing tactic I am referring to the many things that I note to be lacking as I move about the North American built environment and its corporate lobbies, malls, hospitals, apartment buildings and city streets. I’m looking for you community. I’m looking for you connection. I’m looking for you meaning. I’m looking for you authenticity. I’m looking for you sense of place. I’m looking for you personal ownership. I’m looking for you heritage. I’m looking for you natural landscape. I’m looking for you biological diversity. I’m looking for you other ways to put together our world.
The contemporary urban landscape with its corporate design tropes seeks to disempower, disengage, disorient, and control the individual as he/she navigates this terrain. Physical and psychological barriers perform crowd control by design and keep us on task and away from forming connections. Polished stone, glass, brass, patterned textiles, lighting, fountains and foliage act as a dominance display for the powerful yet they also reveal an estranged but ongoing attraction to nature revealed through a form of imitation.
Within these public and private palaces to the dominant powers controlling the ever expanding population of our species, I feel the obligatory sense of awe but more so a sense of longing and melancholy like a rat within a social experiment wishing for personal power, ownership and home. Modern survival methodologies have made achieving shelter and sustenance more convenient for the many (while making it equally or more difficult for those who do not succeed at the game) but these conveniences come at a cost – the cost is our connection to the land, to our food sources, to our homes and to one another. This body of work re-presents a variety of dividing lines while offering an outstretched hand through the flirtatious yet sincere statement: I’m looking for you...
Thanks go to Mike Benevenia, Daniel Stratis, Pete Karis, Selina Doroshenko and Chip Banister for their work on this series.