Ozymandias

Some time ago I became intrigued by posters and flyers pasted on the plywood walls protecting construction sites. Initially I was attracted to the visual aesthetic that paper and graffiti produced on these walls - the random patterns created by multiples of the same poster nest to multiples of others, without care for formal issues of composition or design. I would drive by the same construction site and notice these plywood “canvases” changing on a weekly basis. The layers of paper became very thick at times, providing an almost archeological record of passing time.

When I began collecting and incorporating scraps of found posters into my artwork, I was first interested in mimicking the random aesthetic I had so much appreciated at urban construction sites. Gradually, I began to combine the found paper with my own practice of gestural mark making because I felt they both captured a sense of time: marks reveal the movement and energy of their maker, while the layered posters conveyed a sense of time, place, and design.

As I worked with these (appropriated) paper fragments, I discovered the unexpected aesthetic of their undersides. Compared to the front sides, the hidden undersides revealed a subtler, unexpected, and strangely rich world where language was backwards and colors were often more muted. Consequently, from the beginning of this series, I have used only the backs of the paper I collect.

Developing this body of work, I saw several themes emerging – among them, temporality and notoriety. I was fascinated that the meaning of events and celebrity depicted in print form changed with time: the concert two weeks off was different from the concert two weeks past; the celebrity who today was admired and envied became, by a few tomorrows, just another forgotten layer of paper. My appropriated materials remind me that fame and notoriety are fleeting, that human endeavors fade with time, that eventually the famous and the forgotten become indistinguishable. Yet, ironically, these ideas provide me some comfort and hope. Removed from the harsher realities of time, I’m left with the present moment, a place full of possibility.