Unf*cking Capitalism explores the origin and evolution of our increasingly digitally powered world that exists at the intersection of the virtual and physical as well as how this evolution relates to the future of late capitalism. The book argues that this future will be driven by the capacity of the virtual/physical to cultivate the value of the utility that these virtual/physical connections can provide rather than the value of a thing measured via the price that it yields.
The largest global corporations have played one of the most significant roles in shaping the appearance and functionality of our world over the past several centuries. In the process, they have extracted extraordinary material wealth from the earth and transformed this material through the work of millions of employees into products and services. While these companies generally act as good corporate citizens and have benefited the lives of many, there are instances where a tragic event occurs that causes a disaster at a scale made possible by the staggering scale of their operations. This work explores five such events and the corporations involved through 10 diptychs: The Bhopal Disaster & Union Carbide, Deep Water Horizon & British Petroleum, East Palestine Train Derailment & Norfolk Southern, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 Crash & Boeing, and the 2017 Las Vegas Shooting & the 11 Manufacturers of Guns Utilized.
This work traces Madison St. from its origin in the east at Millennium Park to Pulaski Rd. in the west. Each print contains four photographs, two as if one was walking from west to east, and two as if one was walking from east to west. At a certain point, the perspective meet near The United Center, before continuing on their path moving to the east or the west. In the process, the work juxtaposes the sharp contrast between the area to the west and east of The United Center.
While building affordable housing on the West Side of Chicago, I came across this site of domestic objects that had been strewn across a vacant lot as if caught in a tornado. For me, the still life was poetic. It held beauty in objects, toys, personal papers, detritus, and places where one might rest. It symbolized the precarious living situation that too many people find themselves in while also tracing a consumer culture that has contributed to this precarious state.
This series draws upon a vast archive of images that trace a history of uprisings, protests, riots, massacres, and revolutions that are connected to race while also juxtaposing those images to images that trace Late Capitalism in America. These images sit on fields of color and are framed by an orthographic geometry. A tension gradually forms between the flat surface of the painting and the depth of the image, the diverse colors within the images and the whiteness of the ground, and the desire to make visible and hide the events that have taken place. Ultimately, a rigid geometry is imposed that attempts to regulate, frame, and flatten the chaotic depictions that fade into the distance of the space of the surface and the time of the events that they trace.
Through examining where American Culture, broadly speaking, is produced and consumed as well as how it has been captured by narratives to enhance power structures that drive polarization, this book argues for the merits of a user-owned cultural network and how it might be created. Developing such a network at the intersection of the digital and physical would take attention away from digital platforms that drive polarization and create a route by which users of digital networks profit directly from owning those networks rather than being exploited by those networks. It would support a new space for cultural work for those who have more free time due to automation while also creating a more robust exchange between various types of cultural producers and consumers directly around cultural elements rather than around polarizing topics. The result will lead to a space, conversation, and set of cultural objects and experiences that are more focused on the physical, human, and spiritual challenges facing the country rather than on dwelling in digital spaces that have increasingly become echo chambers.
This series builds off of 027_03_732-751 by shifting the focus from fields of abstract geometric figures to the silhouettes of figures that can be associated with a particular object or the shape of the human body. Like the previous series, this field exists over a non-representational ground. In the process, a tension between the blurred field and a hard-lined field emerges.
Like many series, 028_02_752-786 began with found material. In this case, the material was a considerable amount of wallpaper that had been removed from a dining room that I was about to renovate. The gold silk wallpaper had an incredible quality that made it difficult for me to discard. As I contemplated what to do with the many sheets, I was inspired by the gold ground and inherent flatness of the surface to explore a series of icon paintings tied to traditional icons painting on gold surfaces. Instead, however, of choosing to create images, I favored an iconoclast approach that depicted the person via text.
There has been a great deal of speculation about how the Covid-19 Pandemic will affect art and the art world. This question is, of course, somewhat insignificant as communities around the world continue to face a dire health crisis that leaves more people dead each day. Many businesses remain closed to help fight the spread of the disease while consumer behavior has been fundamentally altered in ways that may have long-lasting effects that will take years for businesses to adjust to. As a result, the economy remains deeply depressed, unemployment remains high, and many people struggle to meet financial obligations.
This series of work reflects a turn away from events and histories, places and territories that exist in the world. In place of these subjects that have served as the focus of other works, I have chosen to explore the geometry and territory of the surface of the painting itself devoid of any external narrative. This has created an opportunity to focus strictly on what a painting can be as an autonomous entity through an explicit dialogue with the history of the medium.
The edge, center, surface, and field of the canvas are the concepts that drive the form of this series. Each is concerned with delimiting borders in a variety of manners and at different stages of the formation of the work.
The notion of a “site” has become something architects fixate upon. We yearn for a potential client to identify a site in order to begin developing intriguing concepts to help win the job. We analyze the ecology, orientation, mobility infrastructure, utilities, history, cultural traditions, habits, and broader urban context in which the site exists. In doing so, we think about the program, allowable building density, building traditions, and overall goals of the client. In some cases, we may consider the buildings that still exist on the site or that have existed on the site in the past.
Generally, the site that we are given is in a desirable location. It is a place that a group has determined is of value. This value is often directly tied to the program that the client hopes to bring to the site. Further, this value is tied to the inhabitants who will animate the program when the building is complete. The location must conform to their expectations, desires, need for security, proximity to other activities, and broader cultural tradition defining how they interact with each other and the city. If these conditions can be fulfilled by a particular location, then it is determined that the site can support the often considerable investment required to create a new structure.
When I was growing up in Chicago – Hyde Park – friends and I would drive these long roads and boulevards – getting high and talking about why things appeared this way, the books we were reading and the theories we thought they contained. The long meditative journey provided an escape from what we were supposed to be doing and a bridge both to the city and the future we imagined that we might inhabit in that or some other city. After returning to Chicago – having lived in Ithaca, Paris, Rome, and New York, learning about so many other road types and how they held the city together – I wanted to direct a more critical eye to these roads up and down which I had passed so many time – most likely, by car rather than on foot. By choosing to walk Western Ave – a road largely intended to move people in cars rather than foster a vibrant street life – I was at once drawing upon the legacy of the Surrealist derive as well as the work of both the Situationists and earth artists in my use of the walk as medium that can hold something to be offered up later for inspection by a broader public. As with those in Paris fascinated by the Zone where the city became the country, I was also looking at a line of demarcation. The meaning and significance of this line is, however, far from clear. It is changing as new investment pours into the city and those who once called this landscape their home are forced to find another place for shelter. This ambiguity can be seen as one walks north along Western and in the role that it plays in marking a line of gentrification between east and west. In many ways, the series of photographs is just the beginning for an ongoing process of documenting this blocks and expanding farther north and south.
Those who inhabit this moment make the future via the present materials. This formation will be guided by negotiating the difference between what we think of as the world and how we see the horizon before us as an individual. As this negotiation occurs, a map is drawn, a new world formed. I explore how power and energy have informed the image of the world, how I inhabit it, and how this inhabitation defines a perspective guiding what we create in the future.
This work explores the idea that on object presented in a context where we typically encounter art – namely hung on a wall in a domestic or gallery setting – can serve as a prop or proposition that points to a broader space and history with the hopes of invoking the discourse around that space and provoking a contemporary conversation. The prop in this case appears as a section of a historic traditional western lath and plaster wall (albeit one that has been ever so carefully removed with the piece of exactly square plaster miraculously intact) that dominated European and American construction for the last two hundred years before being replaced with building systems developed as the core of the modern architectural movement. I invite the receiver to believe that each fragment that has been removed comes from a specific room in which an historic event has occurred. These events are connected by two themes: signing treaties that played a fundamental role in ending wars and legislation that expanded the rights of broad swaths of humanity. Each sculpture is accompanied by a text on the back that notes the specific moment as well as a drawing incorporating photographs of the event. The purpose of the work is to offer time for the receiver to contemplate the current significance of these signatures, the relationship between the different signing events, and the relationship between signing a document on a desk and the particular space in which it is signed. The receiver is also invited the consider the power of the objects presented as artworks within the specific space where they are encountered, how they frame that space, and the way in which they create a gateway to these other spaces and histories through pretense and artifice.