2002 – Current

[portfolio_slideshow height=540 slideheight=540]

These drawings (started in 2002) are shown as individual pieces, as a slideshow installation, or as a part of Blank Paige & The Mirror Stage. As individual pieces, the drawings range from tiny (3×5 inches) to poster-size. As a slideshow, the drawings fade in and out of darkness. I think of this slideshow installation as a pedagogical exercise gone awry, a slideshow of thinking slogans and objectified logical systems.

Blank Paige & The Mirror Stage is a more complex installation, consisting of:

1. A band (made up of me and guests artists) that always performs on a reflective, mirrored stage.

2. An installation (pictured below), the scene of post-performance, after Blank Paige & The Mirror Stage has performed. The installation is composed of recorded songs, real and cardboard music production equipment (a drum kit, a few microphones…), the plexiglass mirror stage, a slide projection set-up, and the projection of drawings behind the mirror stage.

3. The concept. According to Wikipedia, “The mirror stage was the subject of Jacques Lacan’s first official contribution to psychoanalytic theory. He described it as representing a permanent structure of subjectivity, the paradigm of the Imaginary order; it is a phrase in which the subject is permanently caught and captivated by his own image… [Lacan said] ‘the mirror stage is a phenomenon to which I assign a twofold value. In the first place, it has historical value as it marks a decisive turning point in the mental development of the child. In the second place, it typifies an essential libidinal relationship with the body image.”

Blank Paige & The Mirror Stage installation mockup.

Drawings projected as a small slideshow