IN PLACE OF LIGHT (AS ABOVE SO BELOW) (2022) is an installation consisting of soldered copper pipes, performative action, light, and a fan. The floor is opened to reveal a truncated staircase, exposing the previously-exterior qualities of the room, and the copper pipe drawing re-extends the steps upwards into the room. Pulling inspiration from an artwork David Ireland created by recording the neighbors’ voices through the pipes of the house and drawing from Ireland’s aesthetic of building tables, lamps, and structures out of copper tubing, this artwork takes its visual form from the archive and takes its concept from the architecture of the home.
From the opening of the floor, a humming wind is forced up and out from a non-visible fan, and a floodlight peeks out to under-light the copper and cast shadows up and through the room into the next via the bedroom window. Placed in the solarium, or ‘place of light,’ the work brings some of the above below, the outside in, and vice-versa to reintegrate past versions of the house into the present, and to use alternative architecture to imagine an aspirational future.
This work was developed during a year-long research residency and for the solo exhibition AS ABOVE SO BELOW at the 500 Capp Street Foundation in San Francisco’s Mission District. Sculpture created with support by Lindsay Rio. Lighting support by Rico Duenas. Additional advising by Dan Ake and Charlene Tan.
Photographs by Sherwin Rio.