Ersatz good

This paper was written to accompany my MFA show, Ersatz Good, which took place in the University of Iowa’s Levitt Gallery in March of 2024. The included works converge at the junction of print media, photography, sound, and installation. Their creation utilizes a conversational process in which surprises in translation through literal and metaphorical matrixes guide the construction of compositions. Images sourced from media and advertising are deconstructed, and in their collaged reassembly, convey a prevailing sense of isolation, anxiety, and paranoia built into the mechanics of late-stage capitalism. The resulting compositions collide with speed and rhythm. This visual language of marks reacting to found imagery pivots between visual clarity, recognition, and narrative ambiguity. Xeroxed into oblivion, this body of work depicts information entropy in infinite replication, emphasizing the ways in which we frame images in our biases rather than derive truth from them.