Untitled: Gropius 2015
These two lithographic editions (Gropius and Breuer) play on the distortion created by simple paper folds.
I often take found photographs and fold them together to create new relationships using the original printed pages. For these lithographs the same image is printed twice, but one print has been made after the paper has been folded, fragmenting it across the first impression. First the whole image is printed in an intense colour - like an after-burn, a memory, a weaker copy. The black image is fractured by the fold - releasing the colour image like the unconscious of the photograph.
I chose the Gropius Chamberlain House (1941) as a subject because this is the first ‘Bauhaus’ style structure Gropius made after emigrating to America. It’s such a pared-down rational building. The photograph I have used is the one Gropius chose to ideally represent his building. He has opened the window for the photographer thereby duplicating the angle of the light falling across the house. My doubling works with this sense of duplication of angles present in the original representation. My folding breaks into the rationality of Gropius's right angles so that something else - something repressed - can break through. Of course I made this work in LA where disruption to architecture is a real possibility through earthquake, something that Europe never considers.