Eschaton Marker
In 2020, a Pennsylvania State law passed giving landowners the option of using a specific shade of purple paint, rather than signs, to alert others that lands are private and trespassing is not permitted. As a result, the last 3 years have seen a propagation of purple squares on the trees of PA woods. My initial encounters with these markings were disorienting. Unaware of the legal codification, these makings seemed to signify some sort of boundary or warning divorced from any inherent meaning or purpose. This system, a series of signifiers without significance, feels symbolic of a larger division. The concepts of nature/not nature, public/private, sacred/profane all feel like arbitrary markings, beholden to a system built on states of negation. What is “nature” is not “built by human”, what is “human is not “from nature.”
This piece “Eschaton Marker” plays in the space between those boundaries. The materials of its construction-plywood, camouflage vinyl decals, artificial plants, paper pulp- all variously point to conflicting signifiers of “constructed” and “natural.” The elements form a human sized monolith of polished wood, broken by the hyper colors of hunting signage and camouflage. This object is both the pedestal for, and concealer of, a steel and paper “plant” growing from a cutout in its side which sprouts hyper-realist artificial succulants, the combination of which call into question and collapse divisions around realness.