Laced, 2008
Site Specific Installation, Long Island University, Brooklyn, NY
Installation dimensions 13'h x 35'w x 20'd
This piece was installed in the elliptical glass-enclosed gallery inside the lobby of the Humanities Building at LIU's downtown Brooklyn campus. Designed specifically for this site, Laced consists of five new monumental cutouts, which hang from the ceiling and cascade to the floor. This installation is about suspending color in space. Drawn from images of vintage lace doilies, each piece is intricately hand-cut from mylar, then painted and hung in multiple layers. Enlarged and distorted, these delicate pieces resemble brushstrokes caught in mid-air. Though clearly planar, the overlapping layers of colors entice the viewer to encircle the piece, and there is a point at which the razor-thin sheets all but disappear, before a new and surprising color dynamic fully emerges on the other side; a painting gesture transformed into a fully sculptural object. Hanging from a single cable, these tangible yet vaporous pieces blur the boundary between painting and sculpture and take on references of architecture, organic processes, and even ordinary laundry hanging on a line to dry.