Fanya Imholz

“Shapes” vs. “Things”

Big blank concrete walls on the end of NYC blocks are the most consistent “blank” spaces available in the city. Lots of information everywhere else - lots of objects that we would immediately call a person or building or tree or trashcan.

The blank walls get to live this double life as “walls” but also “rectangles” (or whatever shape they happen to be) because of their size, lack of embellishment, and the fact that we don’t give that much attention to any details they do have. The paintings recategorize other things around the wall/shapes to match.

I like thinking about what qualities make a physical object stop looking like an object and start looking like an idea (like a rectangle) or, alternatively, what information turns a shape into a thing (example: blue shape on top of composition = sky).  

-Fanya Imholz