Desk Trajectories (As Is), artist book, 2010
These desks, once the definitive site of organization and productivity, now sit empty, dusty, and cumbersome - as awkward in their photographic frame as they are in the space in which they are pictured. Uncomfortably occupying the rectangular restraints of their offices (and subsequent picture planes) these giant abstract shapes don’t fit nicely. The term As Is indicates a good bargain with perhaps some flaw, but taken here as an ontological statement, As Is points to a sort of existential anxiety: The desk’s value, its reason for being, is hinged on its potential for facilitating productivity, and its form is a testament to ideologies of a clean, elegant modernist aesthetic. In these pictures, all efficiency, productivity and elegance is in question - the mere fact that the desk is out of commission, being sold, points to an attendant deflation of these values.These books are off-set printed at 125% ink density; this means that the ink sits heavily on the page and never actually dries: it rubs off onto things. When you hold the book, it rubs off on you and you leave a mark on it.
