Statement
Meta maps such as Google Earth offer seemingly endless databases filled with 3D geometry that represent and mimic physical reality. Collecting digital models from these landscapes allows me to distort and amalgamate known structures, composing propositional objects that reference existing buildings, but treat those recognizable edifices as sculpture.
Moving between digital and physical manifestations, I unmoor my architectural subjects from their pragmatic limitations. Denying concrete reality, this practice extracts and investigates embedded histories, metaphoric potentials, and mystical substance contained within the structures. In Arrested Ascent (2011), the inverted steeple and buttresses of a protestant sanctuary afford the impression of a ship hull and keel, revealing a historical connection that the church room is traditionally seen as a ship, as is evident in the English word “nave” and the Norwegian “skip”.
The works present conflations of several different figures of authority, socio-religious contexts, and often, irresolvable dualities. Within them references to conventional belief systems and sovereign structures are presented without the anchor of a literal context or ground plane and thus convey a world without clear direction, gravity or polar North. Faith and technology emerge as both vessels for hope and a means of control. Many of these gestures address humankind’s relentless if often confused desire toward transcendence and immortality, and express a romantic longing for new frontiers of consciousness.
