Crosstown Installation

My installation is a non-zero spatial regression of the Crosstown Studio Residency room. The whole room is now the model for 1/3rd, 1/9th, 1/27th, 1/81st, etc miniature versions of the room. Like my previous paintings of windows within windows, the viewer is participating in a space that is artwork. But now the viewer can actually go through what would be a window into another reality in a painting. Each room is covered with mirror on the outside and alternating mural systems on the inside. The mirrors allow the viewer to recreate the space and their relationship to it through their act of seeing. The murals are torus-like repeating systems that make the environment homogenous and promote phenomenological experience. The crystallographic balance of the imagery in the room prevents the viewer from concentrating on a specific part of the artwork in favor of concentrating on experiencing the environment as a whole. The repeated image at Crosstown allows for the use of systems. Each isolated shape has its own system that alters between 2 and 12 colors, gradations, or image progressions. The image has a basic tile, and every 4 times a tile appears can be seen as a frame in a room that is an animation. Each room has its own animation, and these animations will become the artwork after the room is painted over. The image is a non-specific design that I started drawing for my friends’ band flyers. They are loosely inspired by Jim Phillips’ skateboard graphics, Ty Segall’s “Melted” album, what I think early December looks like, Rococo sunsets, and the pollution in early 90s cartoons. The image is a way to confuse the room as a portrait of the viewer with autobiographical imagery. Because it is now possible to find the cultural significance of an idea or thing by searching it’s hashtag I believe a Photorealist painting should be about more than showing an image of a thing to relate to its experience. Art is a process of filtering existing ideas, and I am using this installation to manipulate the photorealist process to involve more updated modes of realism. The gridded translation of photographic information is used to make rooms as information loops that contain actual space. I replaced the straight photograph with an unnatural, abstract spacial illusion that doesn’t hide its design or illusion. Only a single grid increment is transcribed by vertical or horizontal flipping, and only the structure of the Crosstown Studio is repeated into a non-zero infinity.