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These images are representations of institutions that host events meant to generate and implement authority. Because these structures contain us, they also serve as understated factories wherein beings become subjects to be influenced and dominated insofar as they exist inside the civilized realm. It is within the apparatuses of learning, banking, leisure, where knowledge is strategically distributed or concealed. Therefore, it is also through these venues where society organizes itself into hierarchies and, thus, insures its existence. These establishments exist precisely because we are invested in them. This marks our absolute perversion. We wish to be systematized, confined, directed because, in return, The Law lends us value and meaning. It positions us in relation to itself and, therefore, we gain an artificial sense of direction, of belonging to a “one” and not “the other”.
I am interested in cataloguing this phenomenon as one experienced through contradictions—I perceive the facades of these institutions as sites of much tension, where one simultaneously feels belittled and attracted. This duality, in all its degrees and nuances, is our single enduring symptom of that condition we have named “the civilized”, “the elegant”, “the cultured”…
In order to visually communicate the decisive function carried by these institutions, they are depicted in a symmetrical frame and from a low viewpoint. Thus, they stand as self-sufficient entities, unadulterated by their environment because they constitute it. The focus of each image is centralized around the entrance and/or title of its respective building. After all, it is through gateways that we penetrate and participate in this system. Despite architectural trends, I perceive the meaning and purpose of these structures as universal, able to transcend time and space. For this reason, I have taken from them any identity that implied specificity and, thus, Getty Gas has become Gas, Maret simply a School. |
