Exhibition Views:
REACTOR PAINTINGS:
In the “Reactor Paintings”, a clinically sinister, semi-transparent world emerges in groupings of mechanomorphic forms: an imagined environment fueled by – or tainted by - fission and fusion, rods and reactors. Named for operational and defunct nuclear power facilities around the world as well as nuclear industry lingo, the images are metaphorical explorations of the shadow realm of technological progress, of mysterious chemical reactions, imaginary bio-engineered machines and nanotechnological entities. Often glowing blue in homage to nineteenth century cyanotype photographs, they also aim to incongruously evoke the sentimentality of this early photographic process– drawing a temporal line between chemical technologies used in their fabrication and this particular ancestor of digital reproduction. The plastic-encased imagery materially suggests a kind of cautionary containment structure - an atmosphere or mirror that reflects back upon the viewer the face of both user and inventor. These imagined entities also explore ideas about the future fusion of the machine and the biological- familiar and alien, sanitized and seductive.