High Rise

In 2020 the curators of the Adobe Backroom Gallery invited me to activate the gallery space. Instead of mounting a traditional exhibition of paintings and drawings I was inspired by the experimental ethos of the space and I wanted to do something more in line with that ethos. I decided to build on concepts that I was thinking about and working with in my studio related to our shared experiences of a built environment that are colored by personal, political and practical realities. These feelings often feel simultaneously antagonistic and comforting and I wanted to make something that reflected this. I also wanted to expand the concept of painting and the feeling of being in a painting as you experience it. 

High Rise was an immersive, painting-based and site responsive installation that built upon previous interests and experiencing creating installations that expand the three-dimensional spaces in my art works out into the actual space of the gallery. The compositions as well as the title are largely informed by the JG Ballard novel of the same name in which a fully automated, modern apartment structure is revealed to be a major antagonist slowly opening up room for the tenants to expose petty grievances that eventually bloom into full blown violent conflicts, exposing larger class frictions. As I turned the gallery into one of the apartments in one of the towers, the gallery operated as a metaphor, opening up space not for conflict but for dialogue. I was particularly interested in investigating and having conversations about the role architecture plays in our lives and about the narratives we craft to navigate these complex systems. Systems which greatly affect both our personal and cultural psyches.