rehab walls
| still staring at the ceiling of my rehab room feeling like i’m in a weird dream |
“Alchemise terror into art.” said Olivia Lang in the book Funny Weather. One of my favorite authors and one of my favorite quotes. This quote to me, helps embody some of the intention behind REHAB WALLS. In this piece, I try to explore the self, intending to show a transformative, almost metamorphic space, both literally and conceptually. This work draws on many personal influences and other artists. I have been watching, almost in horror, as my style has shifted from outdoor to indoor compositions, much like the transition of Todd Hido’s work in the monographs House Hunting to the later Between the Two. While the Between the Two was driven by portraiture, it showed the change to interiors compositions. Although the comparison is somewhat grandiose for my much smaller, less mature portfolio, it seems apt, as Todd Hido is one of my greatest artistic influences. Another main and strong influence, especially in the roomy layout that features swaths of negative space, is Wolfgang Tillmans. Another favorite artist. How he arranges his exhibitions particularly struck me as appropriate for this project. It lets the photos breathe, certain ones standing out, and other collections standing back by being small, using the photo as one of many elements to drive the arrangement. This has allowed me to shape the photos’ meaning beyond what they could be, to interrelate them. Lastly, and most importantly this work draws on my internal state of being, both as of writing this and when the photos were being made.
| And the room felt so foreign… |
I try to convey, explore, and bring the feelings of my internal space into the physical world in this piece. Starting with the magazine cutout words. Each has its own uniqueness, background, and character, much like the nuance of emotions. The question itself: “What will these walls tell me before they fall away?” came from an attempt to escape. To leave when it felt too much. I would imagine the walls gently falling away, flat onto a perfectly black ground, like paper cutouts. And then I was just there. In the quiet empty, free from the walls, free from the ceiling, alone. But it never happened of course. In reality, the walls always stayed up. So now I have challenged myself to listen to these walls instead of just wishing them to fall away. What did those walls at rehab tell me before they fell away? Maybe to watch the sun more, to notice the incremental advance of the patterns across the room, the fluid change of warm to cool light, the slow shifting of the shapes that seem to defy reality. Maybe I need to not worry about the photos to be made outside of these four walls, to just find work within my space, within my place. When you look close enough to anything you can discover a whole new world.
These thirteen photos are me exploring that new world, the one I can find when I slow down, stop, take a closer look, listen. They were all made in a rehab center in Colorado Springs on the coattails of this past year. All withing the hundred something square feet of my single room, the drab gray and faint blue walls. I struggle to know how to move forward a lot, especially lately. Where is my art going, my life? Who do I find when I stop and look closer? I don’t know, but I do know I need to continue to alchemise terror in art, have potlucks with my friends, and slow down to watch the light slowly change as the morning sun rises.