THE AMERICAN. (2016/17)
Dyptich of digital inkjet prints on Somerset, drywall construction, tinted window film, single-channel silent video.
Dyptich of digital inkjet prints on Somerset, drywall construction, tinted window film, single-channel silent video.
THE AMERICAN appropriates a front page of an historical newsaper, The American, published in 1865 in Washington City (present day Washington D.C.).
Originally created as a site-specific installation for the Roman Susan Art Foundation in Chicago (images shown above), the work uses the gallery’s unusual spatial configuration to set up a physical reading experience of the appropriated source text. Shown in early January of 2016 just before a new and troubling U.S. governnment admistration was to be installed, the work invites viewers to question the contemporary definition of “American” via historical newswriting. The text of the newsprint is set apart so that the viewer/reader would have to recompose the text by reading from left to right and from front to back.
Dyptich shown at 6018North in Chicago on the occasion of the exhibition, Living Architecture (2018), funded by the Terra Foundation.