Damien Gilley

Region: Pacific Coast

Website: http://damiengilley.com

City / State: Portland, OR

The work establishes a radical position within contemporary conversation about perception of architectural space. Aiming to destabilize traditional viewing of structures, I create hybrid-viewing situations that utilize a variety of perspectival tropes. The work foregrounds the fallibility of vision through the presentation of indeterminate landscapes, optical tricks, conundrum forms, and amateur building practices. I incorporate current technical languages like CAD drawings and data visualization, yet also reference vintage digital graphics and virtual environments.

I see the world through a lens of retro-futurism, where contemporary architecture and urban environments collide with the images of the recent past: utopian cityscapes, M.C. Escher, vintage computer games, and prog rock album art. This fantasy architecture offers the viewer an experience that relocates the body in space through the destabilization of façade and the disintegration of physical boundaries and frameworks.