DESCRIPTION
The Suburban Twins series is a personal comment on my experience living in a suburb, which has been most of my life. It consists of 22”x30” and 44”x44” digital prints in black in white.
CONCEPT
When looked at from up close, one can see nothing but lines with minor variations, but by stepping back gradually, images start to appear among the horizontal lines. In Twins I, the images shown are a washer and dryer, representing the automation of mundane everyday life activities, and the Twins II reveal two cars next each other parked under temporary shelters. These “tempo shelters” are to me the ultimate symbol of suburbia, underlining the dependency we have created to the automobile by living in what James Howard Kunstler calls a “Technosis Externality Clusterfuck”. The black and white lines are very clearly reminiscent of alienating prison bars, and remind the pragmatic repetition of suburban planning.
Suburban twins is also a physical experience. By staring at the prints from close up, the lines of the image start to shift, colors start appearing and the whole print moves in strange, static way. This phenomenon is due to the fact that our brain is having a hard time interpreting such a load of symmetric black and white lines causing cold colors to lie on the edge of the white borders, and warm colors on the edge of the black borders. The experience is different for every person looking at the prints, and is a reminder that our eyes were not designed to look at something like this.
TECHNOLOGY
Large-format printing, archival paper.
