In Boys Showing Off, 2006-8 young male models with“unrealized” potential are superficially transformed with make-up into something imaginatively hyper masculine.
The space of the nightclub is one of the few cultural spaces where imagination and fantasy often run wild. There is a blurring of different conventions in nightclubs, across architecture, definitions of social acceptability, and function. For many, the nightclub serves as a point of entry into an alternate world, providing a location for entertainment, discovery and desire. Nightclubs are transformative spaces, both in terms of population and architectural-historical purpose. More often than not they are appropriated spaces, formerly housing everything from banks to parking garages. Through the transformative quality of light and photographic documentation, these fantasy spaces become strange stage sets - places where bizarre architecture and interior design meet faux grandeur and whimsical iconography.
The Exits are light boxes containing durtrans photographs, and range in size, between 48”x52” to 60”x70”. In the Exit's all information has been removed, with the exception of the exit sign indicating perspective.
The Doorways and Openings are life-size, cartoon-like black shapes digital printed ontoarchival, heavy-weight paper. These pieces were created to be installed in any space with white wall space. When installed, they are hung simply using thumbtacks to affix the prints onto the wall.
Using a motion sensor, the Confetti Machine,2004, 2006 creates a celebratory space - expelling colored confettiinto a growing pile on the floor each time someone approaches it.
The Space,
2004 installation provides a temporary site where the audience is made
into a performer. In this installation, specific tiles within the
parquet wood floor have a weight sensors. When an viewer enters the space, their mass sends a signal to a MAX Software program, producing a circular cone of light on top of them for up to 30 seconds.
This piece was produced with the generousity and skills of the following individuals: Hillary Karness, Dan, and Matthew Suttor, of the Yale School of Music.
In the Entrances and Events, I create interventions in existing doorways and interiors using light and cheap party-related materials. I am interested in territorializing these spaces with these short-lived materials, suggesting a narrative that opposes the architecture’s original function. Rather than thinking in a dualistic model, I see the documentation of these temporal party spaces as an effort to raise consciousness about the occupation of spaces around us. Temporarily subverting conventional uses of the space, I suggest a passageway or portal into an alternative or in-between place, as these ephemeral installations only exist as photographs.
Comparitive shopping is a series begun in early 2007. Currently a work in progress, this photographic body of work has an intentional commericial look, and is alwas shot in the studio.
The Corral is an istallation created in the Yale School of Art Gallery, 2002, using wooden fencing, black paint, a disco ball, platform, and prefabricated boots.
Created in
antiqued gold vinyl, The Decorative Barriers, 2004 mimic the velvet ropes used to divide and organize both public and parochial social spaces. The Barriers are installed in a distressed and deflated fashion, in lengths from 2’ to 12’ long.
Repetitive architectural interiors lead viewers to a liminal place atthe threshold of an event. Delineated by color, lighting anddecoration, unexpected staged events exist in doorways and hallways.
In, The Merchandise,2005, intentionally cropped portraits showcase muscular models in bluejeans. The five 5.5”x7” images,are individually framed in 11”x14” white matte, and are hung in a setas one artwork.
The Soap's
is a series of highly detailed portraits of soap. Often situated in
the bottom of a shower or bathtub, the images depict soap in its
post-use state, often covered in residue and suds.
