I am drawn to the subtly iconic imagery and social habits that define cultural attitudes by the very fact of their quietude, repetition, and widespread acceptance. Those things, whether behavioral, linguistic, material, or visual, which lubricate the rough edges of the social machine beg examination. Often employing a practice akin to collage, I uncover, repeat, reassemble, and re-contextualize pivotal details of structural patterns. I find particular interest in those things that appear to exemplify the strength of their respective structures, while simultaneously indicating some level of breakdown or failure. In this failure I find release, empowerment, and sublimity.
I create visual and material tensions to question the permanence of long-established systems. Video loops, pleated fabric, and images of waves invoke the continuous push-and-pull between nodes within a network, calling to mind a perpetual state of anxious expectation and uneasy desire. It follows, then, that any interruption of these repetition structures by an instance of singular spectacle or unyielding rigidity signals a sense of upheaval.
My recent work explores the widespread mobilization of photographs that exemplify the ideals of the Romantic Sublime, particularly those used as icons of social privilege or indices of exoticized personal experiences. The Romantic Sublime Photograph asserts the photographer’s presence in an often privileged spatial relationship with a sought-after view (take, for example, a snapshot of a beach at sunset) while relying on a set of centuries-old visual and philosophical ideals for its validation. As a result it enjoys a certain sense of inevitable popularity, acting as a guideline for demonstrating appreciation of visual phenomena. I’m fascinated by the seeming ubiquity of this condition, and am curious about how this aspect of visual culture defines our relationships to nature. In this body of work, I attempt to dissect the performative act of both viewing and creating this complex nexus of cultural attitudes towards vision, experience, and history.