A Sequence of Ideal Forms
What happens when Beauty is rendered localizable, when it is ascribed a form? What would a compressed, miniaturization of this boundless question look like? What might it entail to disorganize representation within the bounds of a grid? How is a thing of Beauty classified? A Sequence of Ideal Forms is a response to these questions . . . After André Bréton’s “Poème-Objet”, this installation is a materialized poem working to decenter ideal forms of Beauty — troubling the very possibility of its representation and classification.
Scaled down to ‘doll-house’ dimensions, the material elements of the diorama negotiate the interplay between geometric and organic forms, in an effort to mirror the conceptual content of the poems. Concerned with notions of classification, the textual component is conceived as a series of interlocking 'embedded files' that can be reorganized and distributed at random, suggesting an infinite possibility of ‘readings’. This combinatory approach to composition of the installation, disorganizes the method of the traditional archive in which everything is ordered. The installation here favours organic relationships created by proximity over systematized structures of organization.
The process of generating 'embedded files' entails a manipulation of the original text. The text — shrunken, cut up, and remixed — is fixed onto grid paper, then overlaid with tracing paper. The tracing paper creates a shroud, intentionally meant to blur the visibility of the text, troubling the legibility of the written word. The obscuring of what is seen and seeable is a form of intervention, challenging our hyper-visual culture and the primacy given to certain legible forms of physical Beauty.
The two sheets of paper are hand-sewn together, the stitching suggests a reparation, as well as a ‘naturalness’ —as in a ‘letting the seams show’ — versus the high-gloss airbrushed aesthetics we are inundated with in our current cultural preference for more-than-real, unachievable perfection. The rupture, signalled by the ‘repair work’ of the seams, refers to a kind of cognitive dissonance between the truth of inner beauty and outer world representations of these unattainable ideals. The paper element is retained as a nod to the traditional book. As life goes digital, retaining a trace of the ‘real’ print-on-paper book feels somehow to be poignantly more urgent.
Taking up the reoccurring theme of ‘surfaces’ in the poems, the polaroid photographs of various surfaces (wood, glass, skin, leather etc.) serve as ‘surface areas’ and ‘screens of projection’ in the sculptural space. Positioned in conversation with the ‘embedded files’ the ‘surface images’ are a further cut into the contemporary cult of representation (think: a sea of ‘selfies’ unwittingly creating a stream of surface images in infinite circulation). The polaroids also suggest, in a similar streak of nostalgia for the book, both a retronymic and 'mise en abîme' component. The ‘real’ original photos pose for the iPhone, producing a digital reproduction -- a photo of a photo; brings further attention to the tension between the material and non-material, i.e. digital media that pervade our current modalities of self-representation.
Scaled down to ‘doll-house’ dimensions, the material elements of the diorama negotiate the interplay between geometric and organic forms, in an effort to mirror the conceptual content of the poems. Concerned with notions of classification, the textual component is conceived as a series of interlocking 'embedded files' that can be reorganized and distributed at random, suggesting an infinite possibility of ‘readings’. This combinatory approach to composition of the installation, disorganizes the method of the traditional archive in which everything is ordered. The installation here favours organic relationships created by proximity over systematized structures of organization.
The process of generating 'embedded files' entails a manipulation of the original text. The text — shrunken, cut up, and remixed — is fixed onto grid paper, then overlaid with tracing paper. The tracing paper creates a shroud, intentionally meant to blur the visibility of the text, troubling the legibility of the written word. The obscuring of what is seen and seeable is a form of intervention, challenging our hyper-visual culture and the primacy given to certain legible forms of physical Beauty.
The two sheets of paper are hand-sewn together, the stitching suggests a reparation, as well as a ‘naturalness’ —as in a ‘letting the seams show’ — versus the high-gloss airbrushed aesthetics we are inundated with in our current cultural preference for more-than-real, unachievable perfection. The rupture, signalled by the ‘repair work’ of the seams, refers to a kind of cognitive dissonance between the truth of inner beauty and outer world representations of these unattainable ideals. The paper element is retained as a nod to the traditional book. As life goes digital, retaining a trace of the ‘real’ print-on-paper book feels somehow to be poignantly more urgent.
Taking up the reoccurring theme of ‘surfaces’ in the poems, the polaroid photographs of various surfaces (wood, glass, skin, leather etc.) serve as ‘surface areas’ and ‘screens of projection’ in the sculptural space. Positioned in conversation with the ‘embedded files’ the ‘surface images’ are a further cut into the contemporary cult of representation (think: a sea of ‘selfies’ unwittingly creating a stream of surface images in infinite circulation). The polaroids also suggest, in a similar streak of nostalgia for the book, both a retronymic and 'mise en abîme' component. The ‘real’ original photos pose for the iPhone, producing a digital reproduction -- a photo of a photo; brings further attention to the tension between the material and non-material, i.e. digital media that pervade our current modalities of self-representation.
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