Site-responsive collage installation (2012-2014)
Site-responsive collage (2012-ongoing)
My recent collage installations reveal the coexistence of anxiety and beauty in glossy magazines. The images in advertisements and lifestyle articles are intended by their producers to create new desires and manipulate existing ones in consumers. I cut out, organize and remix the images, making do with what is offered and turning the act of consuming into one of creating.
The resulting large-scale abstractions mimic organic forms, evoking both plant and animal characteristics: vines, barnacles, dripping water, as well as tufts of fur, scales and tails. The collected magazine images, symbolizing the never-ending desire for more, appear to grow from a void on the gallery wall, simultaneously representing terrifying nothingness and peaceful stillness. Rather than permanently adhering the individual parts of my collages to each other, I attach them directly to the gallery wall with T-pins, which reference both the constructive process of quilting and the deconstructive process of dissection. The temporariness of the pinning echoes the ephemeral nature of desire and the tactics we use to satisfy it.
This project would not be possible without the generous donations of used magazines from countless individuals. Special thanks to Philip James Salon and Twisted Scissors and Robert Jeffrey Salon.