Implied Objects/Sublime Forms, awardee Assistant Professor Forrest Kelley- OVPR Curate Program

Funding for visual art research and a mixed media exhibition

This project investigates the relationship between landscape, photography, and consumer culture through site-specific research and industrial production methods. Photographs of landscapes associated with wilderness and the sublime are transformed into sculptural forms that emulate commercial encasements and packaging. By elevating packaging over the products it conventionally serves, the project makes absence an active force, examining how images and material forms produce perceptions of value and how the sublime is deployed within systems of consumption.

A key outcome of the project was the development of the material and fabrication processes necessary to translate photographic images into complex sculptural forms. Through extensive experimentation, I developed methods for laser cutting, folding, embossing and debossing photographic materials; applying airbrushed surface treatments; and constructing acrylic armatures and fastening systems capable of supporting the finished works. This process required resolving technical questions involving material thickness, structural stability, surface quality, tolerances, and the relationship between printed image and three-dimensional form.

These investigations established a working fabrication methodology that allows the photographs to function simultaneously as images, sculptural objects, and convincing references to commercially manufactured encasements. The resulting technical knowledge has enabled the production of the Sublime Forms series and provides a foundation for its continued development.