Threshold

For the last 7 years I have been making work that investigates the brick and mortar spaces of the contemporary art world as a kind of alternative landscape and psychic territory—a microcosmic framework from which to reconsider the physical spaces of art's exhibition and commerce as virtual spaces occupy and dominate our contemporary experience. As part of this broader inquiry, the photographs from “Threshold" reframe the exhibition space as content; placing the commercial gallery itself on display—rather than the art intended for our view—they draw attention to the form, effect and function of its distinct architecture and how it shapes our experience. These large-scale color photographs show contemporary exhibition spaces from across the globe, but do not include any paintings, photographs or sculpture; instead, through the subversive use of digital erasure I remove the art intended for our view, foregrounding the gallery and its audience as de facto objects of interest. Pointing to the modernist ideal of the impossibly pristine "white cube," my photographs make visible the often-unobserved presence of the gallery's mythic space and the fallacy of its presumed tabula rasa. Also on display, expectant spectators stand dwarfed within a monumental space, and gaze upon blank walls as if at the edge of a precipice, sublime vista or natural wonder. Their bodies and poses mimicking our own, they remind us of our own roles in activating the artwork. By employing these strategies of erasure, omission, doubling, and mirroring, the photographs direct attention to the gallery's interior architecture as an authoritative space and psychic arena that colors how we see. Revealed both as spectacle and existential void, the physical material of the gallery's white walls seem infinite; and although the artworks are no longer visible, highly polished floors bear their watery reflection, as if a trace of the past, or palimpsest embedded in once porous concrete. Playing with themes of perception, vanitas and value, the photographs examine the preconceptions we might bring to the gallery; the images meditate on being and nothingness from within the unlikely context of art's display and commerce. As part of my broader inquiry, "Threshold" unravels its established order between commerce, culture and display, presenting the contemporary exhibition space as both microcosm and metaphor for a broader world on the brink dramatic change. For sometime now, mega galleries have been playing out a Darwinian drama by expanding their reach, scale and brand through multiple locations across the globe, while mid-size and smaller galleries often struggle to survive; as a result, the latter have found it necessary to downsize, migrate to new locations, close or go completely virtual—their physical spaces, geographies and futures in flux as they respond to market trends, shifting economies and the hierarchies of branding, influence and power. In an attempt to reconcile the art world(s) within a broader ecosystem and the trajectories of time, "Threshold" demystifies the construct of an idealized white cube and the undeniable influence of its scale and minimalist aesthetic while highlighting the viewer's own role in constructing meaning and attributing value.