Fine Art

Eye Spy Series

Eye Spy explores the privacy of its onlookers. Once the viewer approaches the blind, he or she is aware of round darker objects set in a grid-like pattern. One might even deduce these are eyes with black iris looking back. On closer examination, one realizes that the positive side is in fact blank. One needs to take action to learn the truth: open the blind or venture around to see the other side.

There over thousand plastic google eyes set in a grid-like pattern on the blind. There are four blinds total with the size of the eyes increasing from the first to the last blind.

The viewers can look through one blind to the one behind it. They can leave it half-open or closed: their action will influence how the next person will perceive the piece and the series. They can spy at other people through the open slats or hide in the safety of the closed blind. They can turn the eyes to face someone else on the other side or keep them to themselves.

Viewers come to a gallery to see art. Here, eyes, thousands of them in fact, stare at them. They are benign, non-threatening eyes of toys so familiar to all of us. Taken out of the context of stuffed animals they are part of, they become sinister. The shear size of the blind towers over us like a monster, inspecting us with a malevolent, non-faltering gaze.

The blind itself becomes an organism with life of its own. It is like an octopus whose tentacles are about to envelop us. What benign objects and toys do we have that have a potential to get back to us?