The Skin of the Eyes and it took the form of an exhibition of my photographs alongside a related set of drawings* that were part of a larger architectural research project that investigated the architectural skins of eight fashion houses in Tokyo, including Prada in Omotesando, by Herzog + De Meuron, and Christian Dior in Ginza by architect Kumiko Inui. The research and the exhibition were documented in the associated and self-published book Synergy of Excess: Culturalization of Commodity in the Fashion Houses of Tokyo. The drawings use the perspectival view of the photograph to reconstruct the camera’s position. This position is then re-spatialized and an abstracted eye placed at the location of the observer. The photograph of the architectural surface is then projected upside down and backwards onto the “retina” of the abstracted eye and the entire system is then rotated, enabling the observer of the diagram to understand their vantage point as outside of the system. At face value, the construction technique very literally appropriates what Juhani Pallasmaa cautions against in his book The Eyes of the Skin: the primacy of focused vision, a symptom of perspectival representation techniques and also the existence of image-architecture, or retina architecture as he calls it. But the decision to appropriate the very things Pallassmaa cautions against is not to say that I disagree with his values or philosophy, the case is actually the opposite. The appropriation, rather, was just a starting point. As a means to acknowledge his theories in the drawings, the elements comprising them, the line work and photos, were printed on both sides of ¾” acrylic, embedding the potential for parallax within each drawing. Parallax is the phenomenon of motion which takes place when stationary, offset objects appear to move in relation to one another, the effect requires a moving observer. An observer subtly shifting their position in relation to the drawings will activate the effect. In conjunction with shadows that are inevitably projected on the mounting surface, the activated parallax subverts focused vision and engages peripheral vision. The production method of the drawings responded to the statement by Pallassmaa that “unconscious peripheral perception transforms retinal gestalt into spatial and bodily experiences.” 

*drawings produced in conjunction with William Arbizu