The "Fruit Study Field Kit," or FSFK for short, is an all-encompassing device contained within a wooden briefcase to reveal and explain the secrets of the world buried within the sweet and juicy treats we call fruit. It is designed to look like a researcher's kit. It is presented as though it can be taken out into the wilderness, into the "field," for practical, analytical purposes. Its exterior is intentionally simple with only two latches on the front, a handle in between, a long piano hinge on the back for the lid to prop open, and a two-inch-wide insert on the bottom. Upon opening this wooden case, one finds its collapsible stand, a small five-pound scale, and a computer with a seven-inch screen. The case is designed so that when out in the field, one can remove the stand, expand it, and mount the case on top. This makes it an easy all-in-one device for fruticulture (the empirical study of fruit) in addition to being able to shed light on the world's more complex questions. To use the kit, simply place a piece of fruit on the scale, and one sentence answers will appear on the screen to the right.
Photos and video by Gaoyuan Pan

Fruit Study Field Kit

In daily life, the pop-up sign is typically used as a syntactic structure for an individual, business, or institution to communicate with passersby. It carries signifiers, or full sentences, making the physical object an identifiable syntax. By taking and attaching a photograph of the sign onto it, I disrupt its communicative role by drawing attention back to the syntactic structure itself. The "Sign Depicting Itself" is reflexive, perplexing, and reveals the breakdown in the very communicative mode it exists within.

Photographed by the artist

Sign Depicting Itself

In my piece "No Rules," viewers engage with a giant wooden ruler that cantilevers out from the wall in two separate locations. I draw attention to the arbitrary nature of measurement systems by re-creating a ruler that corresponds to no known unit of measure. One-half of "No Rules" presents numbers inverted while the other side seems completely normal—with the exception being its enlarged scale. Upon closer inspection, the numbers on each half do not align or connect as a ruler should. Viewers are confronted with their understanding and experience of rulers as a rational and logical tool, contrasted with my subversion of this function. By inflating the scale of a ruler, I destabilize its communicative capacity. "No Rules" ultimately draws attention back to its syntactic structure—i.e., the agreed upon distance of measurement, which—just like accepting the nature of inches or centimeters as a child must do in grade school—the viewer must accept the nature of my destabilized ruler on its own terms.

Photographed by the artist

No Rules

The Void in My Room is a 4 x 4 foot circular gradient comprised of marker dots along the back wall of my bedroom. From down the hall, it appears to be a blur floating in space. But as one steps into the room, a cloudy effect emerges and slowly morphs into individual dots when arriving at its face. Its center most 3 x 3 inch circle is filled in black which gradually radiates out until it blends in with the wall. When face to face with the abyss, one’s eyes continually bounce between the center and its faded edges. This all happening simultaneously while stepping back and forward again where it transposes between its blurred and refined forms. The experience of seeing The Void in My Room is a perceptual one. The photograph stands only as an artifact of its existence. The cold, formal nature of the void is presented in the personal space of a bedroom evoking a question about the relationship between the two.   

Photographed by the artist

The Void in My Room

And?

"Big Bummer" installed at Kemper art Museum for "Smoke, Signals, Space" exhibition. Photographs by Richard Sprengeler

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