My work addresses the inter-connectivity of contemporary life through the discourse of visual culture. In my practice I re-contextualize visual and textual information gathered from sources both real and virtual. Using craft as a divisive tool, I re-present this research as art, integrating and aesthetic and typically seductive component into the presentation of said data. These works take form as mixed media sculpture, artist’s books, installations, performance and photographic prints. The resulting works blur the distinction between the formal art object and didactic representation.
Using this working methodology, I engage spatial and institutional communities, attempting to draw relationships between commercial and cultural industries. The production of this work seeks to call into question issues of access and diversity; land-use, suburban infrastructure, and auto-centricity; the nature of spatially dictated identity; and the subsequent formation of isolated communal brands.
My art practice draws reference from the artist’s books of Ed Ruscha, Allan Sekula, Bernd and Hilla Becher’s Typologies, and data and mapping illustrations of artists such as Hans Haacke and Mark Lombardi. Citation and appropriation of such artists allows for the work to illustrate comparisons and distinctions between current and past notions of community and communal identities.
First three images:
Travis Shaffer
Thirty-Four Parking Lots in Los Angeles … via Google Maps
5.5" x 8.5" Perfectbound Artist's book
2008
(detail images courtesy of the artist)
Next three images:
Travis Shaffer
Sorority Skin Tones: a Pantone colorguide
7" x 7" Perfectbound Artist's book
2009
(detail images courtesy of the artist)
Last two images:
Travis Shaffer
NYSE:CBL – Mall Maps
7" x 7" Perfectbound Artist's book
2009
(detail images courtesy of the artist)
Travis Shaffer's website