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My exploration of Augmented Reality generated an analog series of collages that utilize similar principles in terms of formal composition. Employing an image of a sculpture as if it were an AR marker, I cut out the shape and slid in its place an alternate image generally an inkjet proof of a painting or some other piece of 2D studio ephemera. (All of these materials are studio detritus, so there is an element of aesthetic upcycling, as well.)
The visual result is a masked painting that sits in a sculptural space. The painting element of the collage achieves pictorial depth by appearing to exist in the round.
Considered in the vernacular of Augmented Reality, this particular collage strategy represents a bit of conjecture about the functioning of perception. The image that is inserted into an Augmented Reality context exists only in the viewers device their cell phone or tablet.
Metaphorically, I see this device as akin to consciousness or the perceptual apparatus through which one makes sense of the world. In this analogy, the AR overlay might be a scrim of prior experience/expectation that modifies perception. This idea of acknowledging pre-loaded content into image-making also finds expression in my use of magazine pages as a support for painting. Instead of using fresh white paper or canvas which might imply perfection, or that the image arises out of the void I frequently use a ground that already supports an image a populated tabula rasa to make the point that an image and the perception of an image are conditional and cumulative.
Tinsquo's curatorial project, Adjacent To Life, presents The Man in the Higher Castle more artifacts from an alternate timeline by John Tebeau.
John Tebeau returns with a selection of newspapers, magazines, 8-track cartridges, record albums, childrens books and cereal boxes acquired from a thrift store residing in an alternate timeline of the 20th and 21st century.
The artist explains the emergence of this parallel narrative:
In a nutshell, heres how that timeline diverged from ours: President Dwight D. Eisenhower underwent safe, professionally administered and 100% legal psychedelic therapy for trauma following his 1955 heart attack. (See NYT-1956.) After all, psychiatrists in the 50s effectively used LSD to treat anxiety, depression and addiction with minimal risk. Once his ticker was healed up, Ike went for it, and in three sessions confronted his innermost challenges and, at the height of his (and the nations) power, came through a better man.
Eisenhowers vision of himself and the world was forever altered, and as Ike went, so went the nation, including his bundle-of-neuroses vice president Richard M. Nixon. At his bosss urging, Nixon gave psychedelic therapy a whirl, and, lo and behold, he too came out a better man. He whupped JFK in 1960 (the cool, self-assured New Nixon mopped up the floor with him in the debates) and became the best version of himself. No paranoia, no loser-boy, chip on his shoulder, no sweat-drenched upper lip. He took Ikes aggressively enlightened agenda and ran with it. Read the stories in NYT-1963. (Happily, JFK had a much better November 22, 1963 in that timeline, and lived to the ripe old age of 88, dying in bed - natch in 2005.)
In short, the psychedelic revolution was officially condoned, medically normalized, and ubiquitous.
The exhibition is on view through December 1 at the Adjacent to Life pop-up gallery housed in Ninth Street Espresso (341 E. 10th Street at Ave B, New York City).
