Looking Awry
"What have we done to our images?" --Werner Herzog
In my series Looking Awry, I scan, enlarge and reprint front-page images from the New York Times newspaper, revealing their Ben-Day dot pattern. I then cut each print into hundreds of handmade square pixels and rearrange them, referencing the aesthetic of corrupted digital files as an analog to political corruption. I replace some “pixels” with square mirrors (a nod to the lossy nature of digital information) and mount each square onto varying lengths of cut wooden dowels adhered to a panel. This pushes the image into the space while the mirrors implicate the viewer, creating depth and movement, and integrating textures and colors from the room into the tragedy. These wall reliefs become monuments to the untold levels of mediation between between my creative acts and the rest of the world.