Desire Line

Desire Line, 2005, C-print mounted to Sintra and Plexiglas, h 70.5” x w 3” (right image: detailed enlargement)

Desire Line presents the entire cast and crew of a single movie on one vertical support the precise height of the artist. As with the companion video Desire Lines, the title of this piece refers to the landscape architecture term of the same name where the placement of concrete sidewalks is established by the organic paths worn into the landscape by foot traffic.

Unmoving

Unmoving, 2004, gelatin silver prints mounted to Plexiglas and Sintra, h 10” x w 32”

Unmoving is a panorama comprised of four photographs made in the morgue over the course of a day. Although the panorama is noticeably empty and still, the space was active during the day. The photographs were made during the time in-between numerous autopsies. Alignment discrepancies present in the four images draw attention to the repeated breakdown and setup of the large 8” x 10” camera and consequential repositioning errors – human qualities in an otherwise lifeless environment.

Headrest

Headrest, 2001, gelatin silver print, h 20” x w 16”

The simple curves and surprisingly elegant design of an autopsy headrest disguise the purpose of the device – to hold the cadaver head secure and allow drainage during autopsies. Additionally, the imposing scale of the work contributes in generating tension between the work and the viewer.

The Plot is Very Bare

The Plot is Very Bare, 2005, 50 LightJet prints mounted to Sintra and Plexiglas, h 4.875” x w 6.5”

The Plot is Very Bare represents an uncomplicated walk across a baseball field to the bench in the dugout. Each photograph is taken from a position one step closer than the previous and the photographs are installed exactly one pace apart from one another. Additionally, this is the Encino Little League field in Encino, CA where the character Stacy from the 1982 film Fast Times at Ridgemont High loses her virginity to Ron Johnson the lecherous audio consultant from the mall.

Head and Headrest

(image intentionally not shown)
Head and Headrest, 2000, c-print (from 16 Polaroid prints), h 8 1/2” x w 28”

Head and Headrest is a sober and methodical examination of an atypical situation.

Phantom/Fountain

Phantom/Fountain, 2004, c-print mounted to Plexiglas and Sintra, h 54" x w 36 1/2”

Phantom/Fountain is a mouthful of water spat at a camera held at arms length in a morgue. The liquid is suspended midair on a dark field, taking on a glowing and ambiguous form. The large scale and highly reflective surface of the piece generates a merger of viewer reflection and image, harkening back in a playful way to the double-exposure trick photographs of ghosts, auras, and ectoplasm found in the mid-19th century genre of spirit photography.

Unspecified Non-Bizarre Delusion

Unspecified Non-Bizarre Delusion (249 Facts), 2003, LightJet print mounted to Sintra and Plexiglas, h 24” x w 36”, destroyed. Image: double page spread in Flyer, magazine, h 4” x w 6”

In Unspecified Non-Bizarre Delusion, the artist traveled 2,790 miles from NJ to CA as part of a fictional fact-finding mission called “The Redondo Beach Fact Finding Mission” (RBFFM). In late December of 2002, the RBFFM representative began at his childhood home in Maplewood, NJ and traveled approximately 11 miles on skateboard to Newark Airport. An aircraft was boarded and the representative was transported to Long Beach Airport in Long Beach, CA, whereupon he traveled on skateboard approximately 25 miles to Redondo Beach, CA and delivered a vintage copy of Black Flag’s 1983 release My War. Total distance traveled: 2790.96 miles. All 249 images made are presented, unedited, and in chronological order. The entire project with images, maps, and notes was published in Flyer, a miniature magazine measuring only h 4” x w 6”.

The RBFFM examined a number of East Coast teenage projections of an idealized punk rock/skateboarding utopia onto the ordinary location of Redondo Beach, CA. The RBFFM studied the ability of an individual to retrieve information of past events and experiences learned from secondhand sources and contrast it with the present reality. Essentially, a thorough autopsy of a dream was performed.

Tools

Tools, 2001, c-print, h 10” x w 24”

I have been photographing in a Medical Examiner office and a morgue over the past ten years. After witnessing my first autopsy, I realized that nothing in these places was going to help prepare me for the inevitability of death. Nevertheless, from that first moment on, every time I went to the morgue I found new and compelling reasons to keep returning.

The scholar Philippe Aries said “...death has become unnameable. Everything henceforth goes on as if neither I nor those who are dear to me are any longer mortal. Technically we admit we might die... but really at heart we feel we are non–mortals. And surprise! Our life is not as a result gladdened!” In a way my inoculation has worked. Through direct experience I have introduced something into my life that will not make anyone exempt from death, yet it has made the prospect of its occurrence incredibly more natural and acceptable.

Device

Device (Mütter Museum), 2001, gelatin silver print, h 20” x w 16”

This device was found in a back storage room of the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, PA. It was most likely utilized to measure skull sizes in support of 19th century theories regarding skull shape and intelligence; however, at some point it became divorced from its informative labeling. Accordingly, it cannot be identified with absolute certainty.

The Swimmer

The Swimmer, 2001, video, color, sound, total running time 24 minutes and 37 seconds (three stills from film comprised of 401 images)

The Swimmer is a layering of inaccessible performance, automatically formatted video, and exceptionally thorough documentation. Ten Hours from now I will begin a seventy-five mile, three day, walking expedition from my apartment in Brooklyn to upstate New York to participate in an event called the Brewster Project. This will be my very own hallucinatory trip upriver into the heart of darkness, during which I will be continually broadcasting to the world – at maximum volume from speakers attached to my body – the entirety of Martin Sheen's hypnotic interior monologue extracted from Francis Ford Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now. Digital images will be produced systematically throughout the trip. Then, upon completion of the journey, these stills will be coupled with Sheen’s monologue to serve as a new and unexpected accompaniment for a well-worn audio track.

The piece is called The Swimmer, in honor of Burt Lancaster's itinerant character in the 1968 film of the same title. The Swimmer is one of the most effectively appalling of all quest films, perhaps even more so than Apocalypse Now, because its calamities are sited in an innocuous suburban landscape during the height of the Vietnam War.

The Swimmer

The Swimmer, 2001, c-print mounted to Sintra and Plexiglas, h 48.403” x w 36.4” (bottom image: film still of Colonel Walter E. Kurtz from Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 film Apocalypse Now)

Core Samples (project for Cabinet Magazine, issue #2, Spring 2001)

Core Samples (project for Cabinet Magazine, issue #2, Spring 2001), 2000, c-print, h 9.75” x w 15.75”

Core Samples catalogs the entirety of my high school cassette collection in miniature and presents it, in the spirit of the sixteenth and seventeenth century Wunderkammer, with less an emphasis on categorization and a greater focus on unexpected juxtapositions. Similar cassette collections of several high school era friends are included to indicate the collective musical findings of a time period. I am interested in paying homage to obsolete technology and taste. This form of Core Samples was presented as a double page spread, or “sexy centerfold” for Cabinet magazine’s second issue.

Hi (Human Matter)

Hi (Human Matter), 1999, Iris print, h 30” x w 23”, destroyed

One of my responsibilities while interning at a morgue was to open specimen containers and separate the pathology samples from the reusable formalin preservative. Before incinerating the samples, I would often arrange the various parts into encouraging messages. The ambiguous characteristics of the samples, along with the color, cheerful greeting, and familiarity of the Polaroid format serve to camouflage the underlying nature of the image.

A Home

Four Women in a Nursing Home, 1994, gelatin silver print, h 4” x w 5”

Middleschool

Middleschool, 1990–1991, twenty gelatin silver prints, h 16” x w 20”

Hampshire College Main Gallery, Amherst, MA

Hospital

Hospital, 1988–1989, twenty gelatin silver prints, h 20” x w 16”