Debate Stage Water Bottles (2016)
The infamous dinner party for several of the presidential candidates… at which an uncomfortable situation arose when a steaming bowl of buttered noodles could not make its way around the table due to the refusal of one candidate to pass the bowl along. "I don’t pass food. I don’t. The media will want me to apologize for this, and I won’t."
These drawings feature short, hand-written texts describing humorous gaffes, shadowy strategies and the more mundane, behind-the-scenes details of various unnamed U.S. presidential candidates and campaigns. These texts are paired with or inside architectural maquette-like schematics of campaign-related environments such as debate stages, hotel rooms, diners, or anonymous carpeted rooms and hallways.
While some of the texts are fictional, a number are loosely based on current or past presidential candidacies. The point of departure for these new works comes from Some Concerns About the Candidate, an installation of drawings and books exhibited in 2013 at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut, in which an anonymous campaign worker describes the questionable tactics of a cult-like figure’s campaign for a U.S. congressional seat.
