Eternal Flame

2020

Exhibited at:

Nichols School, Buffalo, NY

Eternal Flame consists of five wall-based works and a site-specific window installation of pastel-colored, lasercut acrylic pieces which react to the changing sunlight throughout the day. In the wall-based works, small UV prints on aluminum of photographs which have been digitally painted, doodled, traced, scribbled, and drawn over sit atop large, wallpapered photographs. The aluminum prints are aggressively accessorized with stickers and lengths of chain that parabolically droop and hang and which are bejeweled with friendship bracelet charms, keychain bling, Croc Jibbetz, jewelry, scrunchies, boondoggle, and Tamagotchis–which are intended to be interacted with and “kept alive” by Nichols students throughout the length of the exhibition. These materials, in conjunction with the apparent naivete of the digital drawings, create a space of nostalgia, memory, and vulnerability and reflect contemporary aesthetic cults of consumption and self-representation, most notably that of the croc-wearing, metal straw evangelizing #VSCOgirl. The works probe the corporatization of nostalgia and ecological thinking while also paying heed to those earliest of aesthetic encounters: the intimations of the infinite inherent in a stussy-S, the grim reality of a lucky rabbit’s foot, the beauty of a good boondoggle.