New Work

This was a project in which I adopted a business model from the world of fashion: that of making “designer replicas” to see how (or if) that could translate to the business of art-making within the small local community where I was working.

Drawing parallels to that model, I worked “in the style of” another well-known local artist. By that I mean that while my paintings weren’t copies of her compositions,  they looked very, very, very similar. I signed my own name to the paintings and included it on all the exhibition announcements as I was not making forgeries or counterfeits. For me, the project pointed to number of issues relevant to art-making and market forces, including those of intellectual property, authorship, appropriation, the desire for novelty and the legality or illegality of making a picture.

At the time, this project pissed off a lot of people on the local Baltimore/ Washington art scene. But there there was also a large contingent of people who absolutely loved it. I think it came down to whether or not one was willing to look at the project in the spirit of irony and conceptualism rather than just taking the images at face value.

Either way, it was a fascinating project for me, though I don’t ever want to receive that much publicity again! Interestingly, the show sold out faster than anything else I’ve ever done.

There’s a nice article about the project here:
Look-Alike Works Make for an Uncommonly Provocative Show