Capturing the Void

  “I am an eyewitness to the ways in which people relate to themselves and each other, and my work is a way of scooping and ladling that experience.”

Richard Neutra, Architect

Capturing the Void is an absurd notion. Yet, as a thought experiment it creates an almost tangible slippage, opening up vital space for critical reflection. Precisely the type of space needed to think through the process of creating space. Capturing the Void is a reflection of self, one ladled scoop at a time, seen through larger cultural programs across time. Combining framed collage works with collage-based installation Capturing the Void is an experimental visual art exhibition and installation drawing upon this shift and existing as an inviting, immersive and productive environment.

Using seductive, visually appealing images and graphic visual styles familiar from a bygone world of American advertising, Capturing the Void seeks to inspire collaborators in active, ongoing interrogations of reflected cultural projections, illuminating the contemporary state of American utopian ideals from the past. Explore both the light and darker sides of creating the structures that define us, our places and examine their effects on neighborhood communities and ultimately civic identities.

 At the heart of Capturing the Void is a body of collages constructed of colored paper and black and white photographic images.  I work these images of mid century architecture and the Western American landscape, sourced from magazines and coffee table books from the 1950’s and 60’s into compositions that belie easy readings of  the depicted spaces. Initially familiar images of predominantly modern residential interior spaces, loaded with the embedded myths and social baggage, open up and move slowly into new territories of meaning as walls, windows and horizons move unexpectedly, through pictorial space.

 The ascending movement of discarded media from the dustbin of history resurrected as collage elements that moved from paper out into real space becomes a departure point for metaphoric recasting of American narratives that literally morph as people move through the installation. Capturing the Void exploits shifting scale from intimate to the inhabitable in order to shift thoughts about notions of constructing space from the grand to the personal and vice versa. Using black and white photographic images, deconstructed shipping pallets, cardboard and tape the installation responds to the site creating an immersive environment that looks as if a collage has exploded off of the page, up in scale landing out in real space inviting participation in thinking and asking questions about notions of success and their relation to constructing place.