“Enneacontrahedron with Plant”
Foam, Wood, House Plant, Video Projection
Dimensions variable
A large polyhedral hemisphere shares space with a palm tree, illuminated by shifting poly-chromatic hues. The shadow that these objects would cast from natural sunlight if the roof and walls were removed is reconstructed digitally using video projection. The area where the shadow should be is vividly illuminated in subtly shifting gradient hues and moves slowly over the course of the day. The position of the hypothetical sun however is that seen at the exact same time of day in another part of the world – in this case tropical latitudes of Thailand.
The artist recently lived and traveled extensively in this region and made studies of the sun, shadows and quality of light there. The installation poetically conjures a place distance from it’s stark real location: Brooklyn in the dead of winter. It makes another unrealistic gesture: it runs 24 hours, postulating the continued course of the shadows at night. This conceit recognizes the idea of the tropical as a popular and unrealistic fantasy and here the artist makes a comparison to the fantasies created by the digital: the virtual reconstructions and simulacrums which govern popular desires and personal fictions.
Additional works reinforce this theme. An arch is made of seven obsolete Macintosh computers circa 1984, machines which were an icon of the collective fantasy of a generation who were promised the miracle of “desktop publishing” and later an “information superhighway”. Irony is not far away with a set of cyanotype print stereograms (made with sunlight), depicting dolphins, coral and advertising images of the early 90’s which touted the immanence of “virtual Reality”. The work as a whole encourages us to enjoy the immersion of the digital, but also to recognize past popular fantasies, constructed desires and to question where they may be hiding in our contemporary condition.
“Half Arch of Macintosh Computers”
“Chess Pawn With Utah Teapot”, “Utah Teapot With Dolphins” (Stereogram Cyanotypes)”
