Technology has hijacked our reality. The Office Paintings series is my response to this crisis. Based on bland 1980s stock photography, these oil paintings explore the deleterious effects of computerized corporate environments on the human psyche. Appropriated scenes of conventionalized professionalism are recharged with implied—often seemingly inappropriate—emotions. Racism, sexism and the dynamics of abusive hierarchical power linger just beneath the surface. Bright colors flood otherwise neutral spaces as linear perspective gives way to fragmented space and distorted shapes. The historically sterile rationality of the office and its archaic technology dissolves into a mundane and gaudy nightmare. The figures that inhabit these visions assume a soulless “narcotic gaze” in a desperate attempt to survive accelerating change in an imploding world. By re-envisioning a not-too-distant past through the troubled psychology of the present, I imply the possibility of a deliberate, clear-eyed future.
Although made to address issues of contemporary society, my work is also autobiographical. Oil painting is, for me, a deliberate return to process—a practice that has largely been rendered obsolete by emerging technologies and the race for greater productivity and efficiency. Choosing to create art works by hand instead of instantly—digitally—is an assertion of the value of unique objects, with a nod to the reality of experience and intuition.
EDUCATION
1998 BFA The Cooper Union For the Advancement of Science and Art, New York, NY
1996 The Gerrit Rietveld Akademie (winter semester), Amsterdam, Holland
RESIDENCIES
Jan-Feb 2006 CUE Art Foundation Studio Residency, New York, NY
EXHIBITS AND HONORS
2004 Couples, Metropolitan, Brooklyn, New York
2000 Millennium Desert Project, Arcosanti, Arizona
1998 Junge Kuenstlerinnen aus New York, Verborgene Museum, Berlin, Germany
1998 Senior Show, Houghton Gallery, Cooper Union, New York, NY
1998 The Cooper Union Film, Video & Animation Festival, Cooper Union New York, NY
1994-1998 Full scholarship to The Cooper Union For the Advancement of Science and Art