RECIPES FOR DISASTER 2012
RECIPES FOR DISASTER (2012)
This series interrogates the contemporary spectacle of violence and destruction through the construction and photographic documentation of meticulously miniaturized domestic landscapes caught in violent disintegration. Drawing on traditions of both the sublime and the picturesque, the work situates itself at the intersection of romantic catastrophe and postmodern media saturation.
Echoing the sublime’s historic engagement with terror and awe, as theorized by Edmund Burke and later Kant, these fragmented scenes evoke a complex affective response—simultaneously repulsion and fascination—underscoring the fragile and transient nature of existence. Like the Romantic sublime’s confrontation with nature’s overwhelming power, these artificial tableaux dramatize the instant when order collapses into chaos, inviting reflection on mortality and the dissolution of social and physical structures.
The project also resonates with the tradition of dioramas and miniatures in art history, recalling works by artists such as James Casebere and Thomas Demand, who similarly employ scale models to probe constructed realities and mediated representations. Through the lens of contemporary media theory, this work critically engages with Jean Baudrillard’s concept of simulacra and the hyperreal, positioning disaster imagery as a spectacle consumed through a veil of mediation and detachment.
Utilizing photographic techniques including double and triple exposures, long exposures, manipulated depth of field, and mixed lighting, I generate fragmented perspectives that evoke movement and entropy. The digital compositing of hundreds of images recalls the densely layered surfaces of Gerhard Richter’s abstract paintings, where abstraction and figuration coexist in tension. Repetition and patterning serve to both order and disrupt the image plane, while disjunctions of scale destabilize perceptual certitude, complicating the boundary between the artificial and the real.
These works articulate a dialectic of attraction and repulsion—beauty and devastation, order and chaos—transforming contemporary catastrophe into an arena for aesthetic contemplation and existential inquiry. They function as a visual exorcism of collective anxieties around natural and man-made disasters, echoing the sublime terror of apocalyptic visions in art and literature. While fictional in construction, these images are deeply embedded within the visual vernacular of global media, offering a critical meditation on the 21st-century experience of trauma and spectacle.
