Fool's Gold, 2015-2016
My father is a gold prospector. The majority of the memories and photographs I have of him have something to do with gold. Gold is assumed to be valuable, precious. Gold is reserved for the best of the best. It symbolizes prosperity and happiness. Gold is one of the most symbolic things in my life, but for none of those reasons. I use gold to represent the broken relationship with my father; a relationship most people believe to be inherently filled with love and happiness.
In this ongoing series, Fool's Gold, I take broken objects and spraypaint them gold. This action forces the attention of the viewer to be on the expectation of what we associate the color gold with versus the reality of what we are seeing. Gold is meant to be perfect, but here it is applied to imperfections. Does this act of painting something gold take away from its obvious flaws?
These broken objects were things that people were going to throw away or otherwise not do anything with. They hold no sentimentality to me. I am detached from them. However, I place my own importance and story on them by painting them gold and photographing them in the studio.
