Friday, May. 6, 2016 – Saturday, Jun. 25, 2016

Michelle Chang

Triptych references the architecture of the Lawndale Art Center, a former retail store that was renovated into a non-profit art space. The installation sits in a gallery with three eccentric doors along a corridor. Instead of concealing the strangeness of this threshold condition, the project takes it as a design subject. It draws a reading of its elevation from two conflicting interpretations of Francis Bacon’s Triptych, May - June 1973. On one hand, the work can be understood filmically. The three paintings show the narrative of Bacon’s lover dying as he moves from toilet, sink, and over to death. The permanence of a single subject, George Dyer, gives the impression of a single door that frames a sequence of events. On the other, the triptych is a photographic view if the subject is impermanent. The repetition of similar subjects and the symmetry of architectural details suggest a long view of multiple doors from a corridor. This interpretation construes the gap between each painting as an architectural blank space, or blind spot, between areas of visual attention.

This exhibition privileges a photographic reading to construct a partition wall. It creates an alternate fiction to the current threshold to reveal its gaps. Digital seam carving is used to lengthen the wall towards a symmetrical condition, investigating its process to recast how we see.