Le Fond

For a group show we were curating with other artists in a 14th century chateau, I decided on the dungeon. There was a dark narrow passageway that led to  an oubliette, a 20-foot deep hole with no exit where prisoners were left to starve to death. 

        At that time, I was fascinated with perspective: in art, in time, in culture. Each time I drove through a narrow tunnel near the mill, I had the sensation that I was falling vertically, down and down, instead of passing horizontally through a mountain. As I drove, I counted the number of lights in the tunnel, which appeared progressively closer and closer together, yet smaller and smaller toward the end of the tunnel: thirteen.

        I built a twenty-foot-long frame about four feet square and stretched recycled paper from other shows with holes of decreasing size to make thirteen layers. The frame was lowered into the hole, and low-voltage lights were attached to the side of the frame. The lights were connected to a motion detector so that when a viewer leaned over to look into the pit, the lights came on and the perspective made the depth of the pit seem endless.