size variable | watercolor, glitter and iridescent medium on cut paper, distressed two-way acrylic mirror, magic string, fluorescent lighting fixtures with colored gel overlays, LED light panels, reflective Mylar, overhead lighting, oscillating fan | 2010 | Solo Exhibition | Taylor De Cordoba | Los Angeles
Myopic Spring Tangle is comprised of discrete works of art interrelating as a whole — a shift from the more fully immersive installations I’d been making before. Working with the existing gallery architecture, I used a range of techniques and materials to transform the space.
In one area, hand-cut paper painted with watercolor hangs from the ceiling in a cluster, illuminated by small fluorescent tube fixtures with colored gel overlays. The work is tangled with colored thread that travels through the gallery rafters. Several framed cut-paper pieces here are the most detailed and precise I’d completed to date, due in part to powerful reading glasses worn while working. The glasses kept me in a “myopic state” that let me obsessively subdivide forms until the physicality of the paper was pushed to its structural limit.
The exhibit’s final facet is a series of mirrored wall panels — hyper-detailed and resembling a kaleidoscopic ink blot test. Mirrored Mylar window coverings and a multi-faceted lighting scheme connect the three main components into a free-flowing narrative. For this body of work I found inspiration in the Los Angeles River, funneled through the city in a narrow concrete channel — a space both forgotten and unseen. In the mirrored wall relief, viewers face their own reflection in a Rorschach pattern the mind seeks to decode. The use of lighting commonly found in clandestine indoor growing operations adds to a sense of space both natural and artificial, beautiful and unsettling.