The Real and The Fake, 2011
3D computer graphics and photography
This series of images are musings on the death of "food," a significant concern since moving to the Midwest, where I found myself in a frustrating position. My food-shopping opportunities are singular: drive to a mall to buy commodities at a large industrial retailer. Aside from Jewel Osco, there is Trader Joes and a vastly over-priced second-tier Whole Foods - variations on the theme.
These photos are my response to surreal trips down the aisles of the "jewel." The Real and The Fake photos are classical still lives of nutritionally-empty industrial snack-foods that nevertheless have appealing Platonic forms. They are integrated with obviously simulated computer graphics of apples (I actually stole the series' title from an exhibition about computer graphics curated by Rachel Clarke and myself, see www.real-fake.org).
In these images, the real and the fake implode. They are both so fake they are real, so real they are fake. The style is also a hybrid form, bridging between classical still-life painting - Cezanne's apples! - and an industrial product shot. It is, "what it is."
Photo back-plates were created in collaboration with Miao Jiaxin at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago.