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David Trautrimas (Canada)
Artist Statement
I am an obsessed junk hunter. I feel a constant push to seek out the perfect object that I can abscond with and dismantle, that will ultimately provide another core source for my photographic structures. This search has taken me from the treacherous to the banal, from lugging 300 lbs of vintage refrigerator up rickety, century-old basement stairs, to scouring Ebay and Craigslist for the ultimate find. In between are visits to flea markets, church bazaars, yard sales, auto wrecking yards, pawn shops, and neighborhood garbage nights, all in the pursuit of inspirational debris.
Habitat Machines, my most recent body of work, is a series of residential structures born of these sought-after objects. Rescued from tag sales and rubbish bins Art deco coffee pots, bathroom scales, radioactive clocks, electric razors, etc. were collected, dismantled, photographed, and then - by dramatic distortion of scale and context - turned into 30 story apartment buildings or rambling, city-block-sized districts. The landscapes surrounding the buildings are distillations of hundreds of locations I've photographed, and even the smallest details - a curb, a lawn, a fence, the pavement - are combinations of 5 or 6 different images. The only elements of pure fiction are the skies, which result from my manipulation of form and opacity in dozens, sometimes hundreds, of colored layers in Photoshop. The sum of this fictional architecture is one of paradox. On one hand, the Habitat Machines speak to the near sightedness of unrestrained urban development,marked by the isolated, pre-apocalyptic twilight in which these aged structures are situated. At the same time, they convey a sense of delight in free license to create buildings not inhibited by the restraints of practicality, zoning regulations, or even the laws of physics.
Previous to Habitat Machines I produced a series of prints examining the industrial landscape, titled Industrial Parkland. Employing the same technical methodology as in Habitat Machines, items such as power drills, staplers and automobiles where dismantled, photographed and re-imagined as the factories that originally manufactured the source objects. These fictitious factories address both the enchantment of industrial architecture, as so stunningly portrayed in the photographs of Bernd & Hilla Becher, as well as the very real issue of the declining manufacturing sector in North America, and the legacy of derelict brown zones, rapidly proliferating across the continent.
Currently, I'm producing my next body of work, which will be a series of fictional, top secret military installations derived from Cold War industrial design, specifically from the 1950's to 1970's. During that era, industrial design performed many roles, but most importantly served the twin props of Cold War modernity: consumerism and militarism.1 As expressed by Marshall Plan Director Paul G Hoffman, "today's contest between freedom and despotism is a contest between the American Assembly line and the Communist Party line." These imagined military outposts will be fashioned from consumer goods that captured the zeitgeist of the era, such as refrigerators and lawn mowers, and by the same technical process as Habitat Machines, will be re-imagined as hitherto unknown Cold War technologies. Within the fictional narrative of this series, these 'classified' technologies trickled down, eventually reaching the general public as innocuous household appliances. The intent with this new series is to capture a facet of Cold War era tensions, eliciting both promised liberation, and the threat of annihilation at the hands modern design and technology.
Website
www.trautrimas.ca
dave@trautrimas.ca
I am an obsessed junk hunter. I feel a constant push to seek out the perfect object that I can abscond with and dismantle, that will ultimately provide another core source for my photographic structures. This search has taken me from the treacherous to the banal, from lugging 300 lbs of vintage refrigerator up rickety, century-old basement stairs, to scouring Ebay and Craigslist for the ultimate find. In between are visits to flea markets, church bazaars, yard sales, auto wrecking yards, pawn shops, and neighborhood garbage nights, all in the pursuit of inspirational debris.
Habitat Machines, my most recent body of work, is a series of residential structures born of these sought-after objects. Rescued from tag sales and rubbish bins Art deco coffee pots, bathroom scales, radioactive clocks, electric razors, etc. were collected, dismantled, photographed, and then - by dramatic distortion of scale and context - turned into 30 story apartment buildings or rambling, city-block-sized districts. The landscapes surrounding the buildings are distillations of hundreds of locations I've photographed, and even the smallest details - a curb, a lawn, a fence, the pavement - are combinations of 5 or 6 different images. The only elements of pure fiction are the skies, which result from my manipulation of form and opacity in dozens, sometimes hundreds, of colored layers in Photoshop. The sum of this fictional architecture is one of paradox. On one hand, the Habitat Machines speak to the near sightedness of unrestrained urban development,marked by the isolated, pre-apocalyptic twilight in which these aged structures are situated. At the same time, they convey a sense of delight in free license to create buildings not inhibited by the restraints of practicality, zoning regulations, or even the laws of physics.
Previous to Habitat Machines I produced a series of prints examining the industrial landscape, titled Industrial Parkland. Employing the same technical methodology as in Habitat Machines, items such as power drills, staplers and automobiles where dismantled, photographed and re-imagined as the factories that originally manufactured the source objects. These fictitious factories address both the enchantment of industrial architecture, as so stunningly portrayed in the photographs of Bernd & Hilla Becher, as well as the very real issue of the declining manufacturing sector in North America, and the legacy of derelict brown zones, rapidly proliferating across the continent.
Currently, I'm producing my next body of work, which will be a series of fictional, top secret military installations derived from Cold War industrial design, specifically from the 1950's to 1970's. During that era, industrial design performed many roles, but most importantly served the twin props of Cold War modernity: consumerism and militarism.1 As expressed by Marshall Plan Director Paul G Hoffman, "today's contest between freedom and despotism is a contest between the American Assembly line and the Communist Party line." These imagined military outposts will be fashioned from consumer goods that captured the zeitgeist of the era, such as refrigerators and lawn mowers, and by the same technical process as Habitat Machines, will be re-imagined as hitherto unknown Cold War technologies. Within the fictional narrative of this series, these 'classified' technologies trickled down, eventually reaching the general public as innocuous household appliances. The intent with this new series is to capture a facet of Cold War era tensions, eliciting both promised liberation, and the threat of annihilation at the hands modern design and technology.
Website
www.trautrimas.ca
dave@trautrimas.ca
