Much of my work borrows from the realm of standardized imagery. I have a special interest in symbols portraying physical objects (pictograms) that are designed to help us navigate our lives. Language systems such as ancient hieroglyphics, digital icons, architectural notations and public information symbols, for instance, have all served as catalysts for my work. Through memory, these images acquire meanings that were not intended by design.
My work often involves a dimensional translation process of manually carving out symbols (pictorially derived from the physical world) back into tangible objects. Although these new, hand-carved objects retain formal similarities to the symbols from which they originate, their former meanings become corrupted. Instead of offering coherence, my process of “translation” serves to introduce ambiguity. I often push the process further by rendering the newly translated object back into an abstracted image, through etching, photo or video work.
Within the ISO 7001 (International standards) manual it is stated that a “lack of standardization may lead to confusion.” For the sake of public coherence, we collectively face a barrage of visual instructions on a daily basis. Despite the inevitable failure to produce a universal reality, the effort to standardize persists. One can only cling to the hope that compulsively re-examining and re-working the standardized images that exist to guide us, may help us confront deeper, unresolved themes of daily life.
