Hello Wall
2021
For this current body of work, Hello Wall, I have recreated sections of the walls from my art studio at various moments in time and states of progress, both real and imagined. By giving the studio walls the same value as the very artwork they hold and recontextualizing them in a gallery setting, the installation raises questions about what constitutes art altogether.
Hello Wall is an homage to the studio as respite, especially during the pandemic with its restrictive, often hermitic guidelines. During this time, I started to focus more on the poetic spaces in between the artworks: paint that seeped through linen leaving markings on the wall, the plentiful and indiscriminate holes left from nails and pushpins, the reference printouts sporadically pinned for inspiration, the geometric cuts left in paper or discarded foam, the glob of plaster that dripped onto a dropcloth. These incidental details, the remnants and ghosts of art-making, started to take on just as much value, if not more, as the preconceived and much toiled over artworks I had previously been making.
We first enter into the gallery and then enter a facsimile of my world, left to consider the indistinct parameters of art. Sections of my studio wall are fabricated and mounted on the gallery walls—a wall on a wall—thereby fusing the artwork, studio, and gallery. Some of the pieces capture an actual moment in time that was unexpected and unintentional while others are more playful re-imaginings. The fabrication of the sculptures mimics the way a wall is actually constructed: a wooden frame, mounted drywall, corner bead, mud and primer, texture and paint, resulting in a sort of trompe l'oeil sculpture. Placed throughout the space are happenstance studio elements to further enhance the illusion. The installation is a portal from the cerebral experience of being an artist in solitude to the public space of the gallery setting.
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Photo Credit: Ian Byers-Gamber
