Installation view

Besides the four objects that make up In a Perfect World, there is another object which is physically nowhere, yet occupies each of the sculptures. This form, used by Buckminster Fuller in his first Dymaxion Maps, divides a sphere by four great circles into equally sided triangles and squares. Each of the physical sculptures in the group is composed of bowed fiberglass rods that pass through holes cut in mirrors, and each is entirely unique with regard to the shapes, angles and numbers of these components. Yet as the fiberglass rods reflect around in the mirrors, all create this same virtual spherical structure. The rods bow with tension as they pierce their mirrors. They have a sense of sustained action, a charge of potential energy. The virtual sphere’s entire structure is composed of reflections of this charged material, imbuing it with an explosive quality, an outward force bound by its material.

Seeming to float like a nucleus within the recurring sphere is another virtual shape that is different in each sculpture. This form arises from and echoes each unique composition of mirrors. These nuclei are caused by a hole in the end of each sculpture that presses against the gallery wall. The isolated architecture seen through the hole becomes perceptually dislocated, combining with reflected images to form a geometric mass that seems to float disembodied from the surrounding wall.

This paper-like material is nitrocellulose, an unstable material that when ignited burns quickly, brightly, and completely, leaving nothing behind, not even ash. The intention of the piece is for the collector to take it home, and when they are ready, to burn it. The object transforms into a void. And yet in many ways it was already a void to begin with, the veil has just been removed. If the collector cannot bring themself to burn it, the instability of the material will cause it to eventually dissolve into a powder or a goo.

From Inverted Night, installed at the de la Cruz Collection Project Space

Inverted Night is an installation comprised of two elements: a sculpture and a painting.

In E)A)R)T)H), five mirrors intersect a globe, holding it up and giving the appearance of weightlessness. As each section combines with its own reflections, the viewer perceives five unique abstractions of the Earth. The mirrors do not trick the viewer, there remains a clear understanding of what is present physically, but the gestalt images are unshakably real. Where the globe meets the mirrors, the Yves Klein Blue continents form symmetrical patterns like Rorschach blots. Again, there is a dual awareness — the viewer recognizes the political map, but simultaneously interprets an image that reveals something private and subconscious.

The painting element is a large brightly illuminated surface of retro-reflective vinyl. The field sublimates into light, evoking limitless space, while scattered black stars become voids within a blinding night sky. The constellations depict the sky as it was at the moment of the painting’s creation, cataloging a time and place. Blurring the distinction between painting and installation, the space of the painting extends forward to the bank of flood lights that illuminates it, occupying the entire room.

Lumber Icosahedron is from a series of “Light Objects” — in which mundane materials such as lumber or illuminated fluorescent tubes pass through precisely cut holes in structures made of acrylic mirror. In each piece, the angles of the mirrors and of the intersecting objects cause the reflections to form specific geometric arrangements. These reflections created in the mirrors are not simply multiplications of the object, rather, the images in the mirrors combine with the physical material to create a single composition, a sculpture that is a hybrid of the physical and the immaterial. There is no optical illusion in these works, the viewer is never fooled, while the geometric shapes have a very real presence in the perception of the viewer, the physical objects equally maintain their reality as mundane objects. This creates a double-awareness, a resolved paradox in which the thing that is and the thing that isn’t coexist.

In the series “Light Objects” mundane materials such as lumber or illuminated fluorescent tubes pass through precisely cut holes in structures made of acrylic mirror. In each piece, the angles of the mirrors and of the intersecting objects cause the reflections to form specific geometric arrangements. These reflections created in the mirrors are not simply multiplications of the object, rather, the images in the mirrors combine with the physical material to create a single composition, a sculpture that is a hybrid of the physical and the immaterial. The fluorescent tubes are themselves dematerialized by the bright light they emit, they are both glass objects and lines of light. There is no optical illusion in these works, the viewer is never fooled, while the geometric shapes have a very real presence in the perception of the viewer, the physical objects equally maintain their reality as mundane objects. This creates a double-awareness, a resolved paradox in which the thing that is and the thing that isn’t coexist.

The mirrors that make up Building Pyramids are placed at a precise angle relative to each other and to the floor, so that the way the floor tilts back in the reflection recreates the proportions of the three main pyramids in Giza. The floor, spray painted gold, retains its own material texture while distorting to create a new architectural form. The arced shape of the mirrors describe a sphere in their reflections, the circumference of each being equal to the base of each virtual pyramid, thereby “squaring the circle” as the Egyptian pyramids do. The placement of the objects on the floor also corresponds to their Giza counterparts, as does their orientation to the North.

Installed at Dorsch Gallery, Miami

Never Odd or Even is a room-sized installation in which an anonymous looking work station — a table, a chair, painted lumber and a saw horse — are physically doubled across an imaginary plane, as though through a mirror. Some objects intersect with their doppelgangers, some are nearly lost, resulting in new forms that increasingly tend toward abstraction. For the viewer this creates a feeling of paradox, an uncertainty about reality. The viewer is not tricked, they are not fooled into thinking a mirror is present, yet when talking about the piece they invariably use the vocabulary of illusion to describe their experience — this object is a reflection of that object. Though both are simply objects, their existence becomes interdependent. The title, like the installation, is a palindrome, and is taken from an invented book that is pinned beneath one leg of the table, which in the upside-down room creates an absurd reversal of gravity.

The Displacement Prism series explores the dual nature of the photograph, a physical object, and a flat depiction of dimensional space. Using 3D modeling software, a virtual prism is placed within the digital photograph. The displacement of light occurs within the two-dimensional material of the image, not the photographed environment. The photograph is permanently bonded to an acrylic sheet, an image embedded in a prism.

The Displacement Prism series explores the dual nature of the photograph, a physical object, and a flat depiction of dimensional space. Using 3D modeling software, a virtual prism is placed within the digital photograph. The displacement of light occurs within the two-dimensional material of the image, not the photographed environment. The photograph is permanently bonded to an acrylic sheet, an image embedded in a prism.

The Displacement Prism series explores the dual nature of the photograph, a physical object, and a flat depiction of dimensional space. Using 3D modeling software, a virtual prism is placed within the digital photograph. The displacement of light occurs within the two-dimensional material of the image, not the photographed environment. The photograph is permanently bonded to an acrylic sheet, an image embedded in a prism.

The Displacement Prism series explores the dual nature of the photograph, a physical object, and a flat depiction of dimensional space. Using 3D modeling software, a virtual prism is placed within the digital photograph. The displacement of light occurs within the two-dimensional material of the image, not the photographed environment. The photograph is permanently bonded to an acrylic sheet, an image embedded in a prism.

Power Split consists of a common work-light, the electrical cord to which has been sliced along its length. The plug, divided into two parts, is inserted into two separate electrical outlets. This simple gesture defies the architectural structure, creating a new circuit that bridges and vividly activates the space between the outlets. It seems to break the rules, and restores to electricity a kind of elemental vitality. The piece responds in dramatically different ways to changes in its configuration — it can bridge outlets across a wall, across a room, even between two separate buildings, a configuration that challenges not only architectural structures, but economic structures and the abstract concept of energy ownership.

Installed at Sullivan Gallery, the Art Institute of Chicago

Never Odd or Even is a room-sized installation in which an anonymous looking work station — a table, a chair, painted lumber and a saw horse — are physically doubled across an imaginary plane, as though through a mirror. Some objects intersect with their doppelgangers, some are nearly lost, resulting in new forms that increasingly tend toward abstraction. For the viewer this creates a feeling of paradox, an uncertainty about reality. The viewer is not tricked, they are not fooled into thinking a mirror is present, yet when talking about the piece they invariably use the vocabulary of illusion to describe their experience — this object is a reflection of that object. Though both are simply objects, their existence becomes interdependent. The title, like the installation, is a palindrome, and is taken from an invented book that is pinned beneath one leg of the table, which in the upside-down room creates an absurd reversal of gravity.

The viewer climbs a short ladder to look through two mirrors set at 90°. The mirrors split the vision: one eye sees a dart stuck in the wall, the other eye sees a drawing of the same. The mind interprets the two sources as a single reality, a thing existing as both an object and a drawing.

Installed at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson, AZ

Installed in a 25ft-high shaft that formerly was occupied by a fireman’s pole. Two sheets of reflective film are stretched from the floor to the ceiling at a slightly acute angle, causing a set of fluorescent tubes installed overhead to reflect infinitely into a huge arc. Due to the qualities of the thin film, as the reflections multiply out into the distance, they are increasingly distorted. The dynamic visual effect is similar to that of being under water.

Crumpling a piece of paper has an unpredictability to it that makes it the index of the action that created it, to see that random crumple repeated creates a confusion that has to do with time, with the specificity of the moment. Has time repeated itself? Or did this singular moment happen in multiple places?

An aluminum panel is set flush with the surface of the wall. Freezing mechanisms behind the panel cause ambient moisture to accumulate on the surface. The piece changes depending on the humidity and temperature of its environment, it may gather frost or drip away as conditions shift.