Tribes "BX" 2007 Photograph - Limited Edition of 1

Subtext Series Inside the New York City subway system, accessible from the platforms where countless commuters, partygoers, and sightseers pass daily, under stairwells and in plain view on neglected walls, a visual conversation is occurring through time, a conversation rarely overheard and almost never appreciated. Applied and removed by a myriad hands, advertising posters, stickers, magic-marker graffiti, and placards of all kinds interact in mysterious and complex ways. Some of these layers are very old. Some are newly stuck on, but most are torn, peeling down, peeling off, or peeling up. Created by chance, these natural collages become what they are through this process – as old images are ripped away or decay with time and new ones impose themselves. In the conversations between the layers, cultural images and icons vie for power, disappear into and almost unintelligible past, or beckon to us for understanding or laughter. The layers of these images often flip gestalts, so that the old appears fresh and leaps out at us, or torn edges and peeling sheets take on a life of their own and succeed in wresting our attention from newer evidence of communication, but more important, they are communications in their own right – Rosetta stones, panels of hieroglyphs, palimpsests of cultural layers of meaning – all made of intentions and accidents, mistakes and juvenile impulses. I myself was and accident, given up at birth. And this is possibly why the strange beauty of these accidental artworks fascinates me and compels me to mine their meanings and bring them to light. As with “outsider art,” no one is looking at these images. They are none-art, forms with great power created by chance. With no single voice, they still manage to speak volumes about our society, about what we are interested in, what is important to us, and how the different worlds we inhabit collide. Indeed, these condensations of images manage to amplify our society and the places where we truly live, places that are changing and moving constantly. These chance collages keep telling me something. I’m not sure what it is. I just keep on working. In each collage, the different words in the various images speak in a seemingly clear and direct way. But if you look collectively at all of the words in all of the images of each collage, they tell you something else, something that coheres together unpredictably in spite of its wildly disparate parts. Subtext means the focus is less on the poster, less on the advertising. What is really underneath? That’s what makes the actual collages so brilliant in themselves. I couldn’t make them up. There’s no pretension or drama in them. They are not complicated by the intention to make art. They have no artifice. That in turn enables my artistic process to be amazingly simple. And all of this is right there – under a stairwell.

Photography:C-type on Aluminium

Artist Produced Limited Edition of:1

Size:54 W x 35 H x 2 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.