There is a famous saying: “This is my grandfather’s ax; my father replaced the handle and I replaced the blade.” What happens when information evolves? Is any one iteration more valuable or truthful than the next? Taken out of context and housed on the internet – data retransmits endlessly, evolving.
An archive builder; I collect digitized images that are taken from various online sources and reprinted as fine art screen prints. A JPG of an old wooden birdcage found on an antique store’s website becomes an eerily quiet haunted house. A stock photo of rippling water is recontextualized to speak of sea monsters.
Interested in exploring the gaps between data, information, knowledge, and wisdom; I am constantly asking, how much data needs to be collected before it can be woven into information? How much information does one need to contextualize before they can be considered knowledgeable? And so on. I approach this line of questioning as philosophical architecture with these prints acting as accumulated specimens or guideposts. The unsigned, hand-pulled prints are framed and hung in different Baldessari-like configurations. With every exhibition, the layout of the prints is shuffled, so while the content remains the same, the context and relationships are altered with every retransmission.
This fool’s errand demands an endless amassment of puzzle pieces that alludes to an ever-changing and invisible bigger picture.