Derek Stroup
phone: 917-579-5418
derekstroup@earthlink.net

 

 

This project begins with the porous boundary that divides public from private space in the city.  The windows represented here are largely, but not completely, reflective:  when I look across to this building, I see my own identical building reflected there in a fractured but legible sequence.  Some of the windows are more visually permeable:  in places curtains are visible, or a lamp.  Objects within a few inches of the windows are visible, but you can see no further.  The flat panes of glass become dimensional as you see in, or as you see your own view point, a building 100 yards away.  The complexities of this experience, with vision absorbed and deflected at the same time, drive this project forward. 

 The paintings in this project are a network of nodes.  As individuals, some of the paintings are simple, some are more complex, but meaning occurs in the relationships that happen between them.  The paintings are puzzle pieces or fabric swatches in a quilt. Fields of work mean more to me than individual, autonomous objects.  I began by ignoring the bricks and mortar of the building because the windows were the places that were most interesting visually.  By dissolving the architecture, the installation of the work is transformed as well:  it will be large, but also light. The windows of the building will retain their visual porosity, and the architecture itself will become open and available to the spaces around it.

The Identical Building Next To Mine

2004

 

 

 

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