Bubbles

mixed media works, 2018

Histories of the ‘financial bubble,’ begin with a poem by Jonathan Swift written in 1720 after the dubious South Sea Company failed, devastating those who’d invested: “The nation then too late will find, Computing all their cost and trouble, Directors’ promises but wind, South Sea at best a mighty bubble.” Beginning with 16th & 17th c. realist paintings depicting children playing with bubbles, this series of paintings uses ‘greenscreen’ paint – the color by which areas are masked out and digitally replaced (think news weathercasting), to manually ‘map’ out the historical painting, leaving only photographic reproductions of bubbles floating on fields of green. The genre – portraits of caucasian children playing – couldn’t be more Eurocentric and bourgeois, and, through a process of erasure and visual focus on the bubble itself, the works subtly connect worlds of leisure with greed, exploitation, eroded communities and ecosystems, and ironically, our mass psychic isolation in the midst of unprecedented connectivity and wealth. Bubbles here can signify market phenomena supported by insider trading schemes leading to the financial ruin of hard-working people: financial bubbles, asset bubbles, dot-com bubbles, speculative bubbles, housing bubbles, real estate bubbles, all of which eventually burst.

Works:
Hans Olaf Heyerdahl, Boy blowing bubbles, c. 1882, acrylic on wood panel, inkjet print, 24”x24”, 2018
Hans Olaf Heyerdahl, Boy blowing bubbles, c. 1882, inkjet print, 13”x19”, 2018
Hans Olaf Heyerdahl, Boy Blowing Bubbles, c. 1882, acrylic on wood panel, inkjet print, 24” x 24”, 2018
Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin, The Soap Bubble, c. 1739, acrylic on wood panel, inkjet photo, 24” x 24”, 2018
Albert Roosenboom, 1845-1873, Blowing Bubbles, oil pastel on inkjet print, 13” x 19”, 2018
Albert Roosenboom, 1845-1873, Blowing Bubbles, inkjet print, 13” x 19”, 2018

Video Wall (mock-up)