BUILDING BLOCKS The brick: simple, humble, beautiful, practical, functional. Imagine London with its countless brick houses, monuments, bridges, museums... Each building contains tens of thousands of bricks. With a population of over seven and a half million people, London is made up of millions of houses, most of them made of bricks. Even a quick and vague calculation makes us realize that London is made of of tens if not hundreds of billions of bricks.
Billions of bricks. The building blocks of society.
Aside from the sheer incomprehensible quantity this represents, what inspires me is to think of the millions of people these bricks symbolize: those who made them, those who built with them, those who live and work within their walls, the past they reference and the future the promise. I have always been interested in architecture, not just from an aesthetic point of view, but a philosophical one. I view the city as a metaphor for our lives, a living organism that is perpetually evolving.
A brick can exist in and by itself, however it only takes on meaning when placed with others. Each brick is connected in one way or another to another brick, whether next to it, somewhere else in that building, another building, another country, another time... A townhouse in London may directly reference a Roman palace or a Greek temple. Equally, modernist architecture, though vastly different in appearance, is intimately related to the humble brick in that it strives to be different from it. One cannot exist without the other. The same is true of humans. We can of course exist as single entities, but we define who we are in relation to others. We may strive to define ourselves in clear terms, to be precise about our individual characteristics and how we differ from others, but the truth is that each one of us is a collection of universal traits and their opposites. In Chinese philosophy, this duality is best described by yin and yang, the principles of the universe.
This duality is equally present in the building blocks of architecture. The brick can be used to create or to destroy. Immobile, unused, its use is undetermined, only intention gives it its function. A building can be seen both as a shelter, offering a haven from the chaos of everyday life, and as a prison, creating a barrier between the individual and the world.
My work, which is a combination of the virtual and the real, mixing analogue and digital technologies, explores these notions and delves into the ways in which architecture and the details of daily life are deeply interconnected into complex patterns that make up our reality. Reflecting on this, however, makes me realize that my method of working embodies the exact same characteristics and itself can be used as a metaphor for our lives. Letterpress acts as its building blocks, the photography as the embodiment of the reality as perceived through the lens. The photographs in turn are made up of millions of pixels - the building blocks of images - each existing in and by itself, but meaningful only when looked at in context of all the other pixels with which it combines to create a picture. The pixel is the icon of our time and a symbol I have embraced through my work as representative of our generation, both visually and metaphorically. The pixel allows us to see and communicate, yet can also limit and condition what we say. Most importantly, the pixel reminds us of the Gestalt notion that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
My work is also about evolution. Both visually (using Modernist letterpress techniques with contemporary colours) and through the way in which it develops. Because of the methods I use, I have to plan and be structured and rational. Yet, part of me strives to remain erratic, to allow for mistakes in the creation of artwork. Mistakes allow endless possibilities that one could never create on purpose. 'Mistakes' are the building blocks of evolution. Embracing these mistakes is embracing the man-made, organic and randomness of nature.
I am interested in buildings because they are planned, structured and rational, they strive to be both of their time and timeless, but, much like humans, are not immune to chance and the effects of evolution.
Buildings also provide us with another interesting analogy. In many ways, buildings are like an open wound, remaining open to criticism both in the present and in the future. How will they be interpreted 50 years down the line? How will they stand the test of time? Each one of us too is always being judged, but we can't let our actions be guided by the fear of what others might say. The truly iconic buildings, those that stand the test of time, are those that dare to make a statement, to stand out from others and be their 'true self' regardless of what form they may take. For me, this is one of the greatest lessons that architecture can teach us, that to be truly extraordinary, you must simply be yourself and stand your ground.
Gravity is a visual representation of these thoughts. It explores the dual nature of an individual, a city, a world, the infinitesimal relationships that bind us together, synchronicity and happenstance. It seeks not to define our place within the world, but to establish that we do not have only one. Our life path contains myriad possibilities. Some say life is a combination of chance happenings. I believe they are synchronistic events; evolution a combination of intention and randomness. I am a pixel, a brick, a building block of a much larger picture.
