New Work
My work examines ubiquitous objects that fill the urban environment and attempts to subvert the expectation that the ordinary should be synonymous with the mundane. I aim to enliven the everyday and expose the tensions and contradictions embedded in scenes of city life.
I am influenced by the themes and style of the Ashcan School (1908-1920), especially the painters John Sloan and George Luks. As precursors to Warhol, Lichtenstein and Ruscha, these artists were fascinated by advertising signage and the way it competes for our attention. Their work is marked by a subtle politics and an economy of mark-making.
Like the Ashcan painters, I am interested in the contradictions that images help us see. My work of the backs of billboards and covered signs explores (un)spoken, (un)intentional, and (un)available meanings in the urban environment. The focal point of my work is in the areas of absence where there is a duality between covering and revealing.
The effect of urban architecture on the human psyche has been written about by many western philosophers and authors. Bosnian novelist Aleksandar Hemon describes the impact of architecture on the time he spent living in Chicago, “Chicago was built not for people to come together, but for them to be safely apart. Size, power, and the need for privacy seemed to be the dominant elements of its architecture. Chicago ignored the distinctions between freedom and isolation, between independence and selfishness, between privacy and loneliness.” Sometimes urban anxiety and loneliness is called “noir," but the best description of my work is “hüzün,” a term taken from Islamic literature. Hüzün is a hazy state of communal rather than private melancholy. It is described as a kind of sadness mixed with loneliness that stems from living among architectural reminders of a city’s past inhabitants, achievements, and ideals.
I am influenced by the themes and style of the Ashcan School (1908-1920), especially the painters John Sloan and George Luks. As precursors to Warhol, Lichtenstein and Ruscha, these artists were fascinated by advertising signage and the way it competes for our attention. Their work is marked by a subtle politics and an economy of mark-making.
Like the Ashcan painters, I am interested in the contradictions that images help us see. My work of the backs of billboards and covered signs explores (un)spoken, (un)intentional, and (un)available meanings in the urban environment. The focal point of my work is in the areas of absence where there is a duality between covering and revealing.
The effect of urban architecture on the human psyche has been written about by many western philosophers and authors. Bosnian novelist Aleksandar Hemon describes the impact of architecture on the time he spent living in Chicago, “Chicago was built not for people to come together, but for them to be safely apart. Size, power, and the need for privacy seemed to be the dominant elements of its architecture. Chicago ignored the distinctions between freedom and isolation, between independence and selfishness, between privacy and loneliness.” Sometimes urban anxiety and loneliness is called “noir," but the best description of my work is “hüzün,” a term taken from Islamic literature. Hüzün is a hazy state of communal rather than private melancholy. It is described as a kind of sadness mixed with loneliness that stems from living among architectural reminders of a city’s past inhabitants, achievements, and ideals.
