Damien Gilley

Re/Activate @ Wieden+Kennedy

2011-03-19T10:12:00.001-07:00

Re/Activate is a collaboration of sculptural installation my myself and Jordan Tull, reacting to the space and some imposed limitations that were determined by the mathmatics of cutting a 4x8 sheet from corner to center (a 14° angle).

The project is then activated by choreographer Rachel Tess, who worked with abstract composer Thomas Thorson and costume designer Rachelle Waldie.

DECOY

2011-03-19T10:10:00.001-07:00

Decoy: a perceptual play of doubling, approximate symmetry, flatness and color vibration that references (with supporting works not shown) ubiquitous spaces like offices, showrooms, and tradeshows.

Masterplexed at Linfield College

2011-03-19T10:04:00.000-07:00

Masterplexed: a generic digital labyrinth limited to a grid structured floorplan and the standard size of building materials (4x8 sheets of drywall, 8 foot studs, latex paint).

Zero-Sum at Portland Biennial 2010

2010-03-21T11:53:00.000-07:00

Zero-Sum is an installation created with masking tape, airbrush, vinyl and wood that extends the concept of drawing as sculpture. Reacting to the physical space and its idiosyncrasies, the site is transformed into an indeterminate structure that challenges dualistic relationships: flatness and dimensionality, illusion and reality, value and emptiness. The physical structure of the building is both reinforced and negated creating a space in which boundaries are rendered unclear. The space suggests a site either neglected or partially destroyed, with no inhabitants and no apparent function beyond suggestion of some pre-existing activity. The work aims to provoke the viewer’s interpretation of what conflict may have taken place, and between which two, or more, forces. Specific influences guiding this work include interests in duopolies, the housing industry in America, and competition between socio-economic ideologies. The work questions the unknown motivation of spaces, the potential capital in a site, and the tendency for history to repeat itself.

Zero-Sum Games, in relation to game theory, is a situation in which one entity's benefit is balanced by another's shortfall. This can be understood in socio-economic situations as a "strictly competitive" system.

Cashmere Fatigue @ East West Project Berlin

2010-01-20T18:13:00.000-08:00

Cashmere Fatigue is a site specific wall drawing considering ideas of value, defense, and confusion in relation to the retail industry. The image depicts a department store entrance, a reference to Saks Fifth Avenue, the luxury retailer. The work plays off of the existing structure to create an expanded field beyond the gallery walls, one that offers a development of commercial space in unpredictable ways. This work is also inspired by the "pop-up shop" phenomenon in which unoccupied retail spaces have been transformed into stores selling fashion, art, furniture, and various other commodities. The work depicts indeterminate structures in the distance, incomplete forms, and irrational physical space. The scene has a sort of identity crisis, trying to seduce the viewer yet visibly defensive, alluring yet alarming. The work relies on the viewer to designate it as either a retro-futuristic wasteland caught in an awkward economic reflex, or a playful landscape of temporary, creative capitalism. The ambiguity of the image reinforces ideas of hybrid-culture marketing and the renegotiation of comfort in capitalism.

The Pavillion of Iceland Presents the Aurora Borealis, 2009

2009-07-10T13:39:00.000-07:00

"For the 2009 Venice Biennale, the Icelandic Pavillion will present a golden vitrine displaying one of Iceland's most precious natural wonders, the Aurora Borealis."

Looking at the economic collapse globally, Iceland seemed to be the first mega-failure of the western world. With this in mind, the question arises how art may function and what its limitations are when financial and conceptual establishments have been rendered impotent? This piece entertains what Iceland can offer physically, commenting on quality of materials, the limits of representation, and impossibility.

Interesting to note is the actual Icelandic artist in the Biennale, Ragnar Kjartansson's aptly titled "The End" in which the artist will paint a single male subject daily for the entire Biennale, amongst a larger installation. This piece is fantastic, especially concerning the idea of reconceptualization of the artist, the production and display of art, and the disruption of "romantic" ideals. A slap in the face presenting the end of painting once more, with humor.

AIR MATH

2009-04-15T18:13:00.000-07:00

In Air Math, I reorganize the urban environment to provide alternative viewing experiences that complicate rational space. By combining influences from data visualization, architectural drawing, non-Euclidian geometry, and simplified computer graphics the works create hybrid viewing situations that utilize a variety of perspectival tropes. The works question the reliability of vision through the presentation of illusionistic wall drawings, indeterminate landscapes, modular forms, and compositions that extend the parameters of “flatness.”

I am interested in using the language of architectural drafting and info-graphics to explore space, providing my images agency despite my lack of training in architectural design. Instead of providing clear solutions, my work presents possibilities and potentialities that arise out of my unconventional approaches to spatial organization. Masterplan lies in-between defined states of development and completion, and hence can be seen as a sketch similar to a blueprint but more like that of a flowchart. The wall drawings play with the relationship between 3D and 2D, often visually extending space past the wall and negating the wall as a structural boundary.

The Bucky Blanket is based on Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion World Map, but also a comment on the prolific application of his geodesic structures many people have actualized in contemporary architecture. This sculpture serves as a sketching tool for landscape visualization: the "blanket" can theoretically be laid over any organic mass, hence simplifying and transforming the mass into a planar landscape.

Air Math can be explained as the use of science and mathematic pragmatism to create indeterminate spaces that expand the definitions of boundary, containment, permanence, and completion.

@ PSU's Autzen Gallery|Broadway and Harrison|2nd floor Neuberger Hall|Mon-Sat 10-5| Closes April 23

Absorption Field @ Tilt Export: Approximate

2009-04-07T10:30:00.000-07:00

The exhibition space at Gallery Homeland is a transitional area that can only be seen in its entirety through movement. The anamorphic wall drawings exhibited react to movement throughout the space by responding to the viewer’s point of view. There are a number of precise viewpoints in the gallery that activate an extended experience of the existing structural bounds. When viewed from these points, the forms suggest a dematerialization of the building providing an alternate visual landscape beyond the gallery walls.

The cavernous building interior is playfully expanded to create an illusion of a vast uninhabited industrial landscape in various stages of construction. They depict situations that echo the processes of construction and demolition but are unclear as to which one is taking place. This ambiguity is central to my work: in place of defined experiences I wish to create hybrid-viewing situations that extend possibilities of spatial experience and understanding.

Neo Geo

2009-02-19T11:43:00.000-08:00

Neo Geo is flashy, flirting with op art's visuality but introducing an element of surrealism, or a kind of scientific mysticism. I tend to think the idea of neo-geometry might be seen as a philosophy, an approach using visual phenomenon to order, understand, confuse or propose situations in the environment. My use of infographics is my neo-geo tool, a method providing agency to my truly subjective interpretations. This tool suggests possibilities which when investigated may lead the viewer to attempt to solve or explain a given visual situation.

Drawings that look like plans let a viewer anticipate a materialization, relying on expectation and the viewer's motivation of what they want to know from an image. This is an infra-area, a planning process that never ends, and has no finite goal or present status. The image is a presentation of possibilities, a platform to generate ideas through a series of visual cues and suggestion. It is this sort of scientific method that provides an infinite amount of interpretations through the negation of starting and ending points.

Malleability

2008-12-18T16:19:00.000-08:00

Making architectural drawings without being trained as an architect is fake-believing. My drawings have a basis in certain sciences such as drafting, infographics, and science illlustration, all disciplines in their own right. Yet to finish these completely, I would lose the exposure of the process of creation and editing that the drawings rely on, and also fall into the category of the aforementioned disciplines.

Keeping an underpainting or drawing can act as a skeleton, whereas the paint and the image become the skin. This works similar to the façade or skin of a building and its supporting structures underneath. I have always been interested in exposing construction of objects in an attempt to underline impermanence and illusion of the visual world. Showing this skeleton in space is important to explore the possibilities and visual awareness of alternative building design approaches.

Expanding Space in the Mind

2008-10-22T14:03:00.000-07:00

I have been exploring the process of reconfiguring landscape to get a multivalent view of space, looking at ways to break down limitations and expand out of boundaries. I believe our perception of space to be dominantly visual (more than audial, and tactile combined), which may lead one to propose that we can visually alter existing spaces without reconstructing them completely.

We address urban space often by looking where we can go next: below the surface, higher up in the sky, and horizontal expansion. I think the experience of our space is very important, and needs more consideration when we try to increase urban density in a pleasant way. Visually, we can employ methods that can suggest convincingly larger open areas and a more fluid structure/space relationship. Instead of knocking down walls, an informed utilization of color choices, orientation of walls, curvature, perforation, transparency, and modularity (ultimately) can offer a pleasant illusion of expanding space.

Finally, the idea of willfully tricking ourselves is very relevant in our spectacle based aesthetic economy. I argue that the mind that can identify the façade and still allow oneself to succumb to its pleasantries, is the mind most suitably adaptatable in our current society, one that plays as a double-mind. It is an awareness of our purposeful desire to create visually pleasing worlds even though totally manufactured, the goal being to provide the most pleasant experience we can make ...

Quick Fix

2008-09-09T17:24:00.000-07:00

This work for the PSU mfa midway show is latex, graphite, joint compound and drywall. I am interested in façades, walls, and flat surfaces as impermanent structures. This work is inspired by the current housing crash in America, yet before the downturn I had already become concerned at the quality of construction, materials, and general aesthetics of contemporary building. Value is an abstract concept we apply to all things, and housing is one example of extreme value inflation of banal materials and location, ultimately proving its instability and volatility over time. My surface is a mobile gallery wall in poor condition, yet is still painted white and looks good from far away. I am interested in the quality of my work up close and far away and what that can reveal about perception and reality.

Keller Fortress

2008-09-09T17:03:00.001-07:00

This installation is my third in this large format, this being the first to look at irregular surfaces to apply drawing. The work is not site specific or referential to WorkSound gallery, but is a representation of another unrelated site. Keller Fountian (SW 3rd and Market) is a very intriguing public space that I feel is really important to look at as we demarcate space in Portland during our hyper-development and imminent expansion. The fountain is playful and uplifting, but more to me like a surreal world, a place for discovery and exploration. The drawing depicts multiple angles and viewpoints in the park area, creating new forms and compounding the experience of this confusing yet comforting environment. Much of the allure to me is the fabrication of waterfalls, Lawrence Halprin's vision of fusing naturally the urban and organic environments of Portland, to help reverse "urban blight." I cannot deny the irony of manufactured landscapes, but this case is a particularly alluring utopian attempt to increase the quality of life for future residents. The video game reference seemed to me an interesting concept due to ideas of historical relevance (vintage feeling), the "futuristic" design of the fountain, and the playfulness involved in the whole experience.

1 + 1 = 1

2008-07-23T20:25:00.002-07:00

With this project I am interested in making a new space out of a combination of two. Looking at the former Disjecta site on Burnside and the new space in historic Kenton, I fused elements together from both to create a temporal blueprint of the current and potential surroundings of these sites. Using faux materials and illusory space, I am interested in the perceived quality, permanence, and value of structures. I am interested in the built environment and how it may be the physical manifestation of our desired, or unconscious, visual space.

The Information

2008-06-08T16:29:00.000-07:00

Being objective as a viewer could entail that vision is a medium to acquire information, simply visual. I think that what we see may as well be flat planes of color and value, as is a painting. Really, the experience is what we are after, so as long as we get the information, its successful.

Our ability to suppress our knowledge of fabrication, façade, and image as a constructed image is fascinating. We really just want to see what we want to believe.

Accumulation of information is another interest of mine, especially in contemporary culture in which we have access to so much information that we have no chance of absorbing it all. I believe this has some powerful effects that should be looked at:

1) Editing: We must choose and direct our path of information acquisition specifically, hence making conscious decision what to learn about and what not to waste time on.
2) Memory: Like editing, we can't remember everything, and eventually lose, misplace, reconstruct, or completely distort memories that store visual and ephemeral information.
3) Generic Knowledge: We are forced to learn the surface of many fields of thought, not able to spend enough time to deeply learn. We become generalists, rarely specifying.
4) Cultural Loss: Eventually, some information is gradually edited out as insignificant in historical terms, due to the need to generalize in our instruction in school. (ie: 70's bands will become more and more obscure, eventually diminishing to a couple famous "definitive" bands of the era)

Built Image

2008-06-07T19:10:00.000-07:00

I have been focusing on the built environment and its context with natural forms, looking at the image or façade, flatness, the unseen structures and foundations of spaces, and ambiguity and indeterminacy. Urban environments are in a constant state of erasure and rebuilding, always in transformation. Yet our perception in the now of structures reinforces their "permanence," seeing the outside image of a reality. This illusion like quality is imposed on ourselves by our own devices of fabrication, cultural desire, and image manufacture. We manufacture value of things by creating them to meet criteria we perceive as valuable.

Image and Accumulation

2008-05-15T10:46:00.000-07:00

My new painting/drawing series is attempting to order presentation of a miasma of information. Looking to the built environment, or the experienced construction, I see a constant change of our visual environment with development through urban planning and design. The city is constantly editing itself, erasing and rebuilding structures and experiences. This indeterminacy of our living space reminds me of how we must edit and replace information in our memory, cause there is just too much information now to have it all. I am trying to develop a visual lexicon based on our built environment and presenting it in a multi-layered, hybridized format. This compounding of information reminds me of memory and how we process information, seeing what we need at the time and referencing that specific information, despite a vast amount of info present now and through our historical experience.

The graphic drawing is an accumulation of some walking views of the park blocks, the grass or foundation only. Maybe these are the areas most likely to remain the same for a long time. Also pictured is a photo of my new photo series of Models.

Plus Minus

2008-04-09T21:23:00.000-07:00

My recent installation talks about a lot of things I am interested in: compressed experience, blueprints, editing with addition and subtraction, and indeterminacy of forms. It also has a paradoxical nature of looking "good from far, but far from good." Looks clean and precise from a distance, but up close the crude nature of hand-cut and placed tape is realized. I like this unashamed exposure of the material used to construct this image, how it acknowledges the visual environment as constructed. Pieces of tape are layered on top of each other, supporting and reinforcing the structure, filling in gaps left as residue from an unsuccessful attempt at precision.

natural and constructed

2008-03-14T00:30:00.000-07:00

This dichotomy is often discussed, but there is always room in the middle, in between the two extremes. I'm interested in exposing the constructed environment, in regards to the artificial. Façade is a simple version of this construction: the face, flat and illusionistic at the same time. The façade is basically an image, and can may as well be a printed image. The structure behind that should be exposed, so that you don't lie to yourself about it's real-ness. Unnatural construction is all over the place (plastic surgery, photoshop, lasik, make-up, fashion, etc). It seems much more relieving to be aware of the material construction than to deny it, even though you know it's true. Structures, framing, foundations, supports, paint, fabric, images, etc. A constructed image can be natural once it has been acknowledged and understood as a fabrication, and will seem natural in context with culture.

Cut and Paste

2008-02-28T21:16:00.000-08:00

Continuing with inferred spaces and time-based transformation, I am focusing more on the 3D line drawings, optical effects of color, and different ways to look at cut-outs. Cutting and rearranging objects with paper, xerox, reflectives, and dowels. The rearranging of the environment has brought up issues of boundaries, growth, delineation, and containment. Some drawings have been successful in suggesting growing masses that are ordered and related to other objects, creating and negating fields. Using ideas in blueprints, interior and landscape design, fasteners, reinforcements, hinges, hooks, ropes, cables, framing, and architectural elements.

Independent existence

2008-02-13T23:00:00.000-08:00

About individual objects (or visual forms): when does an object or environment cease to be itself anymore? An object exists because we conceptually designate it as so, with a name and a representation to match. Over time, all things change, so at what time does an object cease to be and become something else.

Instead of philosophically, this translates visually in time-based transformations of objects and environments. The building becomes a park, and then a parking lot, and then a building, and then a vacant lot. In between these times, the place is lost, un-named, and unidentifiable. It can be anywhere.

"I never sleep. I've never slept at all. I've never had a dream. All of that could be true."
-ugo rondinone

infered space and façade

2008-01-28T16:38:00.000-08:00

Looking at space in a temporal form has been the underlying theme I have investigated. Reducing environments to shapes, and time-altered shapes, has shown me that I am interested in spatial perception. I have been layering different experiences of environments into single compositions, in 2D right now, to look at how vision uses semiotics and memory (time based) to make sense of the compositions and fill in gaps and make connections. Perspective is a part of this layering, putting things in spatial timeframe. Still working this out on paper, and trying to extend some perspectival line drawings into space. I have looked at stacking as a form of time based transformation as well, a 3D version of the time-altered shapes idea. Some materials of interest are elastic string, die-cut paper, tape, mylar.

Trying to make this relevant today by looking at how we use space architecturally, the idea of façade as representation/reality, and contemporary issues regarding longevity of designs, prefab technologies, and strategies of green design (LEED).

coupling

2007-12-10T11:28:00.000-08:00

I've been looking into concepts like string theory, but not with equations, simply seeing how it describes phenomema and how I can interpret that. String theories exist as a way to connect the theories of gravity and quantum mechanics, things that the General Theory of Relativity did not fully accomplish. String theory helps to connect all facets of phenomena in one bucket. There are 5 major string theories, but a new theory states how it utilizes the existence of all 5 previous theories. The important thing I like is that these theories function in a dualistic manner, interacting with another theory to take on its traits, and vice versa, creating a dependence on each other in a way. So one theory transforms to seem like another theory, and described as "dual to one another." The degree to which these theories interact is based on their coupling strength, or interaction.

I like the idea of coupling, and how different entities have varying levels of coupling strength. This model can be applied to a visual representation of objects, shapes, and boundaries. How they couple and transform is to be determined, but the space in which they combine is in the mind. Utilizing memory of concepts and vision, coupling enables a dualistic transformation of all objects to some degree, in essence connecting all objects to each other in an interconnected web.

Quote from Double-Mind Philosophy

2007-11-18T13:17:00.000-08:00

- "Depicting false realities is no less fake than what is considered to be reality: to overtly manipulate the constituents of such a reality in order to draw attention to it's falseness should be viewed as an attempt to recognize true reality." -

anonymous

retouch me

2007-11-03T23:56:00.000-07:00

I will be getting an airbrush, partly for painting and partly because I used to do high end retouching, and I think I can do it outside the computer pretty good (I hope). It is another layer of fakeness that I wish to expound.

I also realized that nature is my favorite thing. I often think that some people don't really like it that much, and I want them to like it, cause it is one of the most satisfying experiences. So I think I can sell nature if I hype it up a bit. I have been thinking of new personalities and styles for Nature and I think Nature likes to party. When people see the new "party Nature," they will want to get to know Nature better.

Nature Rocks.

And I might use make-up, cause even nature needs a little concealer. Nip -tuck..

math skills

2007-10-24T09:50:00.000-07:00

Measuring and scaling and subtracting and adding and calculating and dividing and multiplying and repeating and replicating and mapping and defining and negating and indentifying and solving and translating the world.

I am realizing I have science and math on my mind when I look at the nature of our visual world and can't help but find it comical, cause I know barely anything about physics. So I am going to attempt to implement my math skills into the creation of my work to give it the believability and scientific foundation that it needs to be seen as real.

cut-out life

2007-10-16T23:44:00.000-07:00

I think a lot of photoshop's misuse is due to bad compositing. Most things are cut out, and placed in new environments and are not done well, or look too studio slick for reality. Collages look like this alot, cause you have limited imagery and you can't alter them that easily.

Long exposures of television is a good thing. You can watch a whole scene in one glance, and figure out what's going on. And it is easier than editing. You don't have to choose the perfect exemplar image of a scene, you just take the whole thing. Like TiVo in TV dinner format, quick and straighforward (the picture of the food inside the TV dinner is on the cover, a hint at what you will be enjoying, minus quality of course).

make fake

2007-10-10T22:17:00.001-07:00

I'm into some bad photoshop right now, or always actually. There is so much more bad than good, why not jump on and be the worst you can! But good.

I filmed some fake animals in a locals Vegas casino. They basically stand around and move slightly, like simple robots. Spontaneously they are accompanied by a small but emotionally charged water show in which hoses shoot water in a reverse waterfall. The music is inspirational americana, and the animals basically look regal all of a sudden when the music hits. The wolf atop a boulder surveys his kingdom, all day and night.

the Henry

2007-10-01T23:02:00.000-07:00

The Viewfinder show was very interesting. Using photo myself, I can't help looking at photos as pictures taken with a concept to make them more than photos. A lot of photography utilizes the apparatus in very similar ways, even the output/final product is presented most often in a simple frame. Often, as in this show, the concept is intrinsically linked with the function of the camera. Examples in the show are blurred photos (Uta Barth), long exposure (Misrach), parallax (Gersht), and camera-less procedures of using enlargers and technical apparatus to get effects.

Can't really conceptualize this in short, but photo has a problem when it enters an object/image making art institution: mechanization. The curator acknowledges this point, but there still seems some illegitimate nature about it, even when it is addressed conceptually. Like people using photoshop effects, only to notice them in the future as a passed fad. It is like photo for photo's sake, patting itself on the back, making inside jokes, and art objects.

Sounds negative, but I don't mean it to be. Photo seems to me to be used outside of itself in much better ways, like documentation, cultural bookmarking, or portraits even. The idea of the camera as a super eye only lasts as long as you don't think about the camera itself.

blahhhg

2007-09-24T16:38:00.000-07:00

I have never made a blog. It's September 2007. People have been doing this forever.

I am trying to find live video footage of the music video "Jump" by Van Halen. I need it ntsc size, not web size. You will be rewarded. **update! I need footage of him doing mid-air splits, like a cheerleader.*

Music videos are important to me, but I rarely watch any. I don't have TV. And I don't download videos. I like the older ones, or I watched so many when I was younger that they influence me.
But I pretty much don't like them now.