Implicating my own paradoxical desire for the HGTV show Fixer Upper as a starting point, Renovation Game is about examining how reality television, and home makeover shows in general, reflect issues of race, gender, aspiration, and the American Dream in contemporary society. The entertainment industry is masterful at codifying these tropes into gleaming aspirational surfaces which can be seamlessly consumed, imprinting themselves onto the viewer. Through material transformations, performance loops, immersive video, and spatial interventions, I aim at the edges of desire, looking for the seams, and where the mediated reality of Fixer Upper and the Magnolia empire as a whole begin to collapse.
Restoration by Proxy (2024)
Silicone, 3D printed PLA, foam, surgical screws, Magnolia Home™ mirrors, sandbags
Dimensions variable
Silicone, traditionally used in Hollywood as a bodily proxy, is rendered as a building material held together by PLA printed plastic supports and screws. Moving these interstitial objects from inside the walls and into view, I’m interested in what they reveal about the power structures operating behind the scenes of the renovation/gentrification process. The bruised, white “flesh” is on life support, decaying, almost medically held together. It’s not meant to be revealed, it's out of place. The tableaux is ordered like a commercial product display reflecting the language of consumer curation. The mirrors, purchased directly from magnolia.com, interact with the other sculptural objects creating closed loops.
Unzipped (2024)
2 VR video headsets, 2 Magnolia Home™ chairs, silicone, steel, foam, pigment
Shot in 180 degree immersive POV, this work follows the technical conventions of mainstream VR pornography in which a prescriptive container of actions occur where layers of symbolically loaded clothing fall away only to reveal more layers. In this production environment, the eyes of the camera become the eyes of the static performer and in turn, the viewer. A confusing agency shift occurs where the active performer appears to have dominance within the virtual space while the viewer is locked in and acted upon.
Fixer Upper’s “Chip and Joanna” are flattened out, becoming almost doll-like in their objectness. With their silicone masks (made of the actors' own faces), morphsuits, wigs, and costuming, the performers are quite literally trapped within surface, their eyes being their only means of expression. This is meant to be a space where the Gaines’ most private and intimate moments are expressed. Instead, we’re again forced into a reductive, normative performance.
Credits:
Joanna Gaines-Rachel Alig
Chip Gaines-Nathaniel Whitfield
Director-Matthew McGaughey
Cinematography-Robert Kerian
Set Design-Blake Palmer
Makeup-Lancel Reyes, Brad Hardin
Editor-Matthew McGaughey
Sound - Matthew McGaughey
Production Coordinator- Jack McKeehan
Camera Support-Sacha Riviere
Grip-Ivan Gatz
VR/Unity Post-Production and Coding-Radiant Images
Thank you to Honor Fraser Gallery, Jamison Edgar, and Alice Scope for their generous support.
Hole Theory (2023-ongoing)
Silicone, pigment, and canvas on wood panel
This work comes out of my exploration of holes in the demolition/renovation process as sites of revelation, transition, and violence. These abstract paintings, which are produced through over 20 layers of silicone and airbrush paint, are both bruises and thresholds. They’re at once flat and then spatial. I’m thinking of the home renovation as a stand-in for the ever modifying and “improving '' physical bodies we possess. As the desirability of certain physical traits originate from the digital spaces of traditional and social media tropes and signifiers, forcing a reckoning with our own corporeality, so too do our desires for aesthetic modifications to our domestic spaces. The hole, as a zone of process, is an opportunity to break the surface, punching through, revealing the scaffolding underneath while concurrently maintaining flatness.
Reconstruction (2024)
4-channel video with 8-channel sound, wood, drywall, screws, tape, joint compound
