ADRIANE COLBURN
Artist Statement
For the past several years I have been working on a series of cartographic installations comprised of layers of hand cut paper, light and shadow. These constructions depict aspects of the world which we cannot normally see; a microscopic organism, an image from the depths of our interior anatomy, a labyrinth of pipes and systems buried beneath us or the land we live on as it was 200 years before. I am interested in how these inaccessible places are transformed once they are flattened into two dimensions and mapped out, and how the visualization of information, a system, landscape or history, creates an abstraction that can be simultaneously informative and ambiguous.
The act of ordering our surroundings by way of a chart or image is both an effort to make sense of the tangle that is the world we live in and an investigation into that which we truly cannot know. Within this attempt to analyze environments through mapping, we go through a process of elimination, editing out all information except a minute selection that becomes illuminated. In my artwork, I often do this through physical removal, cutting out everything except the imperative line and thus creating maps that are equally informed by voids and positive marks. Within this process of cutting, an intricate system of reflective shadows results, expanding on the actual object. These ghost lines often overpower the physical piece itself, creating an ambiguous space between what is solid and what is ethereal.
In my most recent works, I reference systems that we utilize in everyday life, but are largely removed from our consciousness. Sprawling organisms such as urban sewer and water systems and the global network of pipes and refineries that develop and transport oil have been fodder for an investigation of the complex yet base, and at times grotesque, constructs that support modern society.