This is a more subtle version of my Pepsi Cola Sign miniature. I recreated the famous Pepsi Cola sign from chipboard standing on wood sticks as columns. This view once marked the journey of photographers to the gritty parts of the city. Long Island City that used to be an industrial area with cheap real-estate is now being rapidly gentrified. At first this sign was installed facing the people of Manhattan, but later it became famous for the photographs from its back side facing manhattan. Now only the residents of the high rise directly behind him can enjoy the juxtaposition of the sign with Manhattan's city skyline. For the rest of us we can visit the park and have a picnic directly under it on the well kept mowed grass. I took my miniature to that exact spot and recreated the famous view of manhattan from the back side of the Pepsi Cola sign using my scale model, revisiting a view made famous by photographs.
A Better Me
If my idea would have worked the picture would have failed. If the circle was perfect the image would not work. If not for the mistake in the exposure it wouldn't be the same. If not for wanting desperately to save this picture it would have been forsaken.
There is something wonderful, and something terrifying looking back at who you were and what you've made. I am very happy this one is one of its kind, yet I know it could not be reproduced. Not by technique and not by the artist who made it.
I used to write letters to other versions of me. Better versions from the past. So this is an ode to a better me from 2013.
Not Yet Pennsylvania
I often use Google Maps Street View to find potential roads to drive through on a road trip. Where Google Street View doesn't cover I can tell it is rural, remote or just unpaved roads. I am a foreigner in this country, and I learn to know this nation through its roads.
On my GPS I use the "Winding Roads Maximum" settings and mark few locations on the way to our end of day destination. This way I get off the highway and see the country side. It feels more like an adventure, but in reality for other people it is everyday life.
This picture was taken as I thought we've already crossed New Jersey to Pennsylvania right after sunrise in a foggy late spring morning. My phone location tagging proved me wrong. What I imagined to be Pennsylvania in its full glory was still the Garden State. I often make jokes of New Jersey, they are ones that I borrow from the culture surrounding me, but the truth is that I haven roamed the state enough to give my opinion on more than the New Jersey Turnpike or the Jersey Gardens Outlet Mall.
So here we go - this is New Jersey in all its beauty!
Foliage
"Foliage deals with the fetish and romanticism of the Fall season. Specially regarding the medium of photography where depictions of foliage that represent the Fall are printed on paper - AKA trees - which is ironic, amusing and also sad. But in a more serious tone the cycle of seasons is interrupted by the attempt to depict them in photographs. Foliage is a dead leaf that I picked at Forest Park, Queens. I laser cut out of it small leaves, based on its shape and from other leaves based on their shapes, to generate miniature foliage on the bottom of a shadowbox frame - sort of cannibalizing the a single fallen leaf into making a depiction of foliage.
At the same time this piece resembles the natural cycle of trees shedding their leaves to save energy for the winter and fertilize the ground to support their own regrowth, and then also this piece examines the accumulation of dead leaves into the fetish that is foliage - which should not be undermined!