Automatic Ruins

Opening reception: Friday, November 14, 6 ? 9 pm
On view at SPACES: November 14, 2014 - January 16, 2015

Photo Catalogue

Automatic Ruins explores industry through the lens of fragility and impermanence. Fusing printmaking, sculpture, and chemical experiments, this project considers the possibilities after obsolescence, as well as the nature of what we choose to preserve. In these works, the etching process is pushed beyond its traditional boundaries, as a re-enactment of the rise and fall of industrial economies.

This project was born out of the impulse to give industrial artifacts the historical continuity that they were missing in the archives. It is essentially, an act of making ruins; an attempt to accelerate the natural processes of time and erosion in order to re-imagine decades of stalled history. In Automatic Ruins, historical artifacts are replicated using zinc etching plates, and then submerge in a copper sulphate etching solution. Through this process, the artifacts are gradually eroded from within, while an organic copper coating transforms them into almost unrecognizable mounds. This process evokes an alchemical creation of time, memory and historical aura.