Stirred by wanderlust I am drawn to the line, color codes, shapes and patterns of maps. Reflecting on this vocabulary, I question how absolute our sense of location can be with the inevitable distortion of spatial perception that occurs when we transcribe three-dimensional space onto a two dimensional surface.
My practice contemplates how this distorted data informs our collective knowledge and how through dissemination and distinct experience it transposes itself onto the individual. In my paintings and projections the viewer seeks location but experiences dislocation as information is lost, altered and revealed through translation, degradation and excavation of paint and projected image. I create a palimpsest with the materials by layering and then removing the strata. In this the work becomes an act of discovery where I am displaced into a new territory. This act relates to the sensuality of the individual’s revelation of ‘place’ through the direct physical connection to painting and drawing. The subjectivity of this revelation in turn reconstructs our collective knowledge while simultaneously corresponding with and fueling our spatial experience. This work lies in the shifting terrain between the real and the unreal, the abstract and the representational.
By embracing and challenging the lineage of the map and landscape motifs I reorganize notions of space and place in my project developing works that play with my visual interpretation of the notion of ‘common’ information regarding these subjects. As the protagonist who elicits complicity through engagement I intend to reorient the viewer towards the position of an active participant rather than that of a passive spectator.
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