Painter and sculptor Kiel Johnson created a gorgeous cardboard model of a twin-lens reflex camera. It actually functions as a pinhole camera. His next exhibition, opening October 17 at the Mark Moore Gallery in Santa Monica, CA, is dedicated to the printing press. The centerpiece of the show, titled "Publish or Perish," is a huge metal and cardboard of a printing press with a 70-yard drawing fed through it. For more, see the upcoming print issue of Hi-Fructose, Volume 14.
From Johnson's artist statement quoted on the Hi-Fructose blog:
An interest in "the way things used to be" as well as the "way they might end up". I enjoy engineering and design features of the past. A time when objects were well crafted and meant to last for a generation or more, not just a season. I enjoy thinking about a time when your fancy new sewing machine came in a big pine crate and you needed a pry-bar to open it. Once opened, the machine had thousands of moving parts all cast in iron and aluminum, with levers, knobs and switches. You could see how it was built and if something broke down, you might even fix it yourself with a basic set of tools and some ingenuity.Publish or Perish: Kiel Johnson
I'm thinking about dying technologies, communication highways, information networks, power of the press, memories of youth, searching, investigating, lessons learned, stories told, Thomas Paine, W. R. Hearst, printed images, reproduction, news feeds, "live at five", "this just in", "Exclusives", HIStory vs THEIRstory vs HERstory vs the PRESStory vs FAMILYstory.
RSS Feed
The camera piece was(maybe still is) hanging in the Continental Gallery on 4th and Spring in downtown LA as part of the dublab.com 10 year anniversary extravaganza. The film was played on the big screen at the downtown independent during the Labrat Matinee screening on oct 2nd. so awesome!
but it doesn't actually operate as a camera? I don't get the point...