SHORT ARITST STATEMENT ON QUARRIES
My works are grouped into "projects," a central concept underlying each. Quarries> includes multiple types of works, each derived from single images. The title suggests that the images are treated as metaphorical quarries: many rectangles are digitally extracted from each, some also modified. A parallel to our industrial system's treatment of the planet is intended, though I hope my work is less physically destructive.The Quarries> project began with the Grids, for which the image is digitally divided into between 4 and 169 rectangles, which are then rearranged using random numbers. Other types also use randomness, or have extensively worked-on-rearrangements; most often they mix both approaches. My hope is to expand, deepen and renew eyesight, suggesting the inexhaustibility of any looking at an image, or at any scene in the world.
Fred Camper
Chicago, Illinois
September 2, 2020.
"Quarries" explores the parts of a single image. In the Grids works, an image is divided into grids of rectangles, between two-by-two and thirteen-by-thirteen, and then rearranging those grids using random numbers. Occasoinally the numbers result in two or, rarely, three adjacent fragments being positioned next to each other. More often, all kinds of unexpected connections, and disconnections, emerge. Images that are contiguous sometimes appear broken due to a line in the image that is near the frame line. Non-contiguous images yield up unexpected continuities. Details that might pass unnoticed in the original image become heightened and intensified through reframing. It is my hope that because of the choice of images and the ways the parts are rearranged and presented, each work creates a kind of opening-out effect, suggesting to the viewer that seeing, and the seeing of a single image, offer a nearly infinite diversity of possibilities. The 12G works combine 12 randomly constructed grids, but the ordering of the twelve is not random. The Figmented, Remade, and X-Ray works reduce the cells in resolution by varying degrees. Every Quarry work is an edition of one.
No random numbers are used in the construction of the "Twos," for which I choose two image fragments from the division into grids that will interact in interesting ways, or in the original grids of the Remade works. More on my intent and the larger context for my recent work can be found in my recent Artist's Statement.
Quarry 1: Times Square (2009-)
Quarry 2: Illinois Forest (2009-)
Quarry 3: Power Lines (2009-)
Quarry 4: American Shoe (2010-)
Quarry 5: Valley (2010-)
Quarry 6: Venice Beach (2010-)
Quarry 7: Marina del Rey (2010-)
Quarry 8: Construction (2010-)
Quarry 9: Venice, California (2010-)
Quarry 10: Hollywood (2011-)
Quarry 11: Torrance (2011-)
Quarry 12: Refinery, Torrance (2011-)
Quarry 13: Ancient Los Angeles (2011-)
Scroll through the first 50 Recuts from five different Quarry images.
Scroll through all the 12G works completed thus far.
Scroll through all the Enlargements works completed thus far.
Scroll through all the Figmented works completed thus far.
Scroll through all the Recuts works completed thus far, or take a tour of ten selected Recutworks.
Scroll through all the Remade works completed thus far.
Scroll through all the X-Ray works completed thus far.
Scroll through every original image that a Quarry group is based on.
