IMAGE LAYERS
2024
Steel, Plexi, Glass, LED lights, controllers, and 3D PLA Prints
Variable Sizes
Inspired by our ever increasing digital engagement, the steel-framed, backlit, wall-mounted artworks are a constructed axonometric interpretation of the virtual space in photo-editing software. Quay actualized the altered image by exploding apart the 2D image plane to create material layers of a filter foreground, subject middle ground, and illuminated “monitor” background. The “filter” layers- composed of textured glass- distort the 3D-printed floral and foliage spreads behind.
The florals chosen for the series are autobiographical to the artist. Dogwood is indigenous to all of the places Quay has lived. Lavender, peonies, and daylilies filled her childhood yard. Texas bluebonnets were prevalent where she attended graduate school, Bougainvillea surrounded her wedding reception, and hydrangeas are abundant in her present Metro-Detroit neighborhood.
Jean Baudrillard’s concept of hyperreality- a blurring between what is real versus simulation- is ever present within Quay’s botanicals; they have been altered from their original form through a dual digital and material transformation. Artificial versions of the plants were 3D-scanned, their digital models edited to remove faux artifacts, and then reproduced as 3D-prints. Amidst these black, reflective, illuminated environments are temporal lifeforms frozen in time. The uncanny florals reference the memorialistic nature of file-saving, while simultaneously demonstrating a mode of digital permanence in the physical world.
