| 09.21.2022 | 22×24″ | acrylic on stretched canvas |

When climbing the ladder of an educational institution where the boundaries of individual thought are constantly forced to question their own merit, an individual can easily fall short, finding themselves in a state of disorientation and desolation within the never ending span of blank, yet highly expecting planes to create from.

I reflected on a week in Wurster Hall through painting a détournement. I chose elements which resonated with my experience and negated the value of their previous organization of expression. Representing instead, the feelings which they evoked in their relation to one another and in relation to my own experience. I represented the model I am currently working on in my studio–a tall and narrow building composed of a series of switchback ramps which lead up to a rooftop viewpoint–as a ladder. The outstretched plane which composes the background is in reference to the endless plane of Rhinoceros 3D. 

The spherical light of the Environmental Design Library is represented as an apple, extending from a naturalistic form along the top of the canvas. Nearly resembling an actual apple growing from a tree, the light form reflects the sense of nearly being outside while in actuality, my time in Wurster is an indoor experience lit by artificial lights. The liquid-like figure at the bottom center is the encapsulation of my own malleable individual mindset under the rigid guidelines and expectations of a design institution. 

This détournement reveals a new meaning about my time in Wurster Hall this week. A state of ambiguity in which the individual components of the painting lose their original sense and grip of reality.