How to Make a Mirror
October 8 - November 5, 2022 | Melanie Flood Projects, Portland, OR
Artist:
Lyndon Barrois Jr.
Overview:
In How to Make a Mirror, Barrois works across media to explore the CMYK color model as a foundational system for information—one that mirrors societal structures and holds the potential to inform one’s perception of self.
This solo exhibition of Barrois' work was curated by Yaelle S. Amir for Melanie Flood Projects in Portland, OR.
curatorial statement:
In How to Make a Mirror, Lyndon Barrois Jr. renders the underlying structures integral to image production and consumption, exposing both the shortcomings and the successes of an image’s ability to mirror one’s experiences in and of the world. With collage, sculpture, weaving, and painting, Barrois explores two main intersecting themes—the first addresses his interest in the CMYK print method as a microcosm for the systems governing society. The second looks at print fashion magazines as a portal to oneself—an assumed reflection of our identities and desires.
The CMYK system used most commonly for printing is a process by which its four colors – Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and black (Key) – work together to form information off a white background. In this inherently reductive system, the CMYK colors are created by inks subtracting the colors red, green, and blue from white light, thus echoing much of the biases in our society. Throughout the exhibition, we witness Barrois repeatedly breaking down this model to examine various formal structures and cultural contexts for each.
KM-Ultra and Toner Totem I reflect the technical language and forms of the CMYK method, drawing attention to its most basic components. Bloom displays Barrois’ interest in woven photographic textiles as another form of printing, displaying what happens when a machine translates pixels of clothing into literal cloth. The collages and sculpture comprising the series Vague November are composed of images derived from fashion magazines and product packaging that introduce diverse social frameworks for individual colors. In the diptych Blush I & II, Barrois employs magazine cutouts from a GQ article about the experiences of a male writer roaming the city while wearing makeup for a day, resulting in an oversimplified analysis of one’s personal and intentional stylistic choice. In System Error we view a printing dialog box reporting an imbalance between the color and black ink levels as demonstrated in a portrait of the trailblazing model Pat Cleveland. Through this rendering, Barrois points to the oftentimes subjective history of representation on magazine covers. With these works and others, Barrois makes apparent the technicalities of the print production process to raise questions about the constitution of the image and the ways it represents culture.
The driving force throughout How to Make a Mirror is Barrois’ concurrent fascination and deterrence from the machines that produce images. Like his sourced fashion images themselves, the CMYK model is revealed to be a highly flattening system, which glosses over the nuances of identity and cultural contexts. Yet Barrois is not asking us to discount our visual landscape, but instead observe each gradient, shade, pixel more closely so we might gain a greater understanding of it.
Yaelle S. Amir, October 2022
About the Artist:
Lyndon Barrois Jr. is an artist and writer based in Pittsburgh, PA where he is an Assistant Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon University. He is half of LAB:D, with artist Addoley Dzegede, with whom he has collaboratively staged two exhibitions, and co-authored a book of essays (Elleboog, at the Jan van Eyck Academie in 2019). Using magazines, advertising, cinema, and vernacular imagery as primary subjects of inquiry, Barrois’ multimedia practice breaks down and re-configures the languages of print, design, and popular culture in order to investigate underlying ideology, ethics, and conceptions of value. Recent solo exhibitions include Mirage Collar at Artists Space, Others Who Struggle with Nature at Rubber Factory NYC, Vague November at Van Eyck Open 2020, and Zaal 8 at Kasteel Oud Rekem in Belgium, and the two-person exhibitions Mercantile with Addoley Dzegede at Sharp Projects, and Dreamsickle with Kahlil Robert Irving at 47 Canal. Barrois Jr. received his MFA from Washington University in St. Louis (2013), and his BFA in painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore (2006). He has recently completed residencies at Latitude in Chicago, Loghaven in Knoxville, the Van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, Netherlands, Fogo Island Arts in Newfoundland, and the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, Ireland.