Black Mirror / Espejo Negro
Series produced November 2007 to April 2009
Installation, c-prints, and artist’s book
PL CAT#: 08.05.510.0000.00.325
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Past projects in the series include (not all represented in this selection): View all suites together |
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Photographic Suite #1 (Process Suite), 2008 |
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Photographic Suite #2 (Back View Suite), 2008 |
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Photographic Suite #3 (Painting-Sculpture Confrontation Suite), 2008 |
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Photographic Suite #4 (Spatial Suite), 2008 |
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Photographic Suite #5 (Social Construct Suite), 2008 |
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Black Mirror Book Project, 2008 |
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Casta Paintings, 2008 |
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Black Mirror/Espejo Negro is the common title and concept for three large scale projects in different media: an ephemeral installation at the Nasher Museum of Art and five corresponding archival photographic suites, an installation at Luxe Gallery in New York, and a concluding artist’s book project.
The New York project consists of a site-specific installation created by Lasch for Luxe Gallery’s storefront windows. Facing Stanton Street, black mirrors with almost invisible images confront passersby on an everyday basis, even as the gallery is closed. Gallery viewers and pedestrians see their faces reflected in ghostly figures and imaginary buildings gradually appearing from under the glass. Reflections of the interior and exterior architecture of the actual surroundings also become part of these fleeting pictures. Post-colonial theory and aesthetics, ongoing immigration debates, and current ideas around latinidad frame this public visual dialogue in the intensely cosmopolitan context of New York City and the specific tensions between Loisaida and the Lower East Side.
The five archival suites of large-scale c-prints produced for this project are based on Lasch’s grand, yet ephemeral installation at the Nasher Museum of Art in Durham, North Carolina (May 22, 2008 through Jan. 18, 2009). Commissioned by the museum to accompany its blockbuster exhibitions El Greco to Velazquez (2008) and Escultura Social: Contemporary Art from Mexico City (2009) the installation incorporates sixteen pre-Columbian figures from the museum’s permanent collection, placing them in front of black reflective panels through which images of Spanish old master paintings are just visible. Museum visitors also see their own faces reflected on the same glass panels. The photographic suites capture different processes and experiences at play in the Nasher installation. They also provide the foundation for the third and last project for Black Mirror/Espejo Negro, an artist’s book that concludes the series. Co-produced by Luxe Gallery and the Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke University, the book includes high quality images, writings by the artist, as well as critical essays by art critics and social theorists.