New Brutalism
2010 – ongoing series, Chromogenic print, 30x40"
New Brutalism arose from a series of experiments to generate crystalline formations. Titled in reference to an architectural movement whose utopian philosophy of building preceded the radically different monoliths that were constructed under its moniker, this body of work analogously intended to produce a scenario in which my hypothetical expectations could be measured against a set of divergent outcomes.
In response to the unreliable and unanticipated chemical reactions that took place, the detritus of these often failed experiments became the material basis for a series of sculptural and photographic compositions. These sculptures, created out of crumbling, oddly shaped crystals and rocks, at times reference architectural structures and geological formations; at other times, they appear as otherworldly ruins. In this manner, rather than solely signify what they are, they allude to the possibility of what they could be. Here, failure generates an instance of negative entropy, where disorder is framed as a potential for re-emergence.