Publication & Exhibition (2010)

Hyde Park Apartments is a visual taxonomy of an Austin, Texas neighborhood and its various apartment complexes. Flat-footed, everyday photographs of slightly run down stucco and brick structures are paired with fanciful titles such as “V.I.P,” “Spanish Trails” and “The Jacksonian.” Inspired by Ed Ruscha, Lewis Baltz and Bernt and Hilla Becher, the series records ongoing attempts to evoke the ideal through aggrandized nomenclatures.

It took me several months living in the Hyde Park neighborhood before I noticed what Berndt and Hilla Becher might describe as a typology: a high percentage of the apartment structures, built mostly in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, were named, and those names were advertised on their facades. Most people, myself included, drove, walked, biked, texted or iPhoned by them without noticing. Then... in walked Ed Ruscha whose early photography books encouraged me to document these structures in unsentimental and serial form. This body of work is by no means high on the originality scale, rather, it continues a conversation that Ruscha began in Los Angeles decades ago. I’m using his strategy to document a beautifully banal architectural phenomenon in a much less (until recently) mythologized location.

People don’t want to just live in an apartment, but in a villa. They don’t want a parking lot but an arbor. They want to do more than pay rent, they to aspire to a lifestyle. I’m fascinated by the degree to which these naming display efforts are successful (or not!). In some cases the name, the font, the façade, and the architecture coalesce into a “living experience”: The Beehive, The Monticello. In others, nothing works: Bent Tree,The Del Prado.

The book Hyde Park Apartments, published by Publication Studio, presents 47 apartment diptychs. The apartment names (on the left side) extracted from their context (on the right side) emphasizes the disconnect between the advertised and the actual. When closed the two come together. Whether it’s a kiss or a collision is a matter of opinion.

A 98 page book of the series is available from Publication Studios/Breezy Circle.

Press
ArtForum Critic's Pick (pdf)
Publication Studio Interview  (pdf)