CultureAmerican
Titles
- Mirror (from Home Décor Catalogs and Websites)
Date2001–2011
MediumChromogenic print
DimensionsOverall: 19 7/8 × 15 1/4 in. (50.5 × 38.7 cm)
Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by the Mark & Hilarie Moore Family Trust in memory of Timothy A. Fallon
Object number2014.831.1
Not on view
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DescriptionIn the 1970s and 1980s many artists created works based on appropriated images cut from magazines, rephotographed, and repurposed. Knowingly building on that strategy, Umbrico trolls the Internet, downloading thousands of images that have become visual tropes: sunsets, mountains, televisions, office furniture, and domestic interiors, for instance. Here, she has scanned or downloaded images of mirrors from home-furnishing catalogues and websites, isolated the mirrors, digitally skewed them to correct for perspective, enlarged the images to the dimensions of the actual size of the mirror being advertised (hence the noticeable pixel or dot screen pattern visible from the original source), and face-mounted them to nonglare acrylic. “In this new form, they are sculptures of mirrors, hung on the wall as though they are actual mirrors,” Umbrico explained. “When you look into the mirrors in these environments you lose yourself and vicariously become someone else, as you fantasize about living in a completely different environment. But when you look into the mirrors in these environments you are not reflected back, the objects replace you.”
ProvenanceThe artist, New York; [Mark Moore Gallery, Culver City, California]; purchased by MFAH, 2014.
Exhibition History“A History of Photography II: Selections from the Museum's Collection,” The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, March 17–July 19, 2015.
Inscriptions, Signatures and MarksSigned on verso lower right: P. Umbrico 05
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