Memoria Technica, 2019

Exhibition with Brooke Breckner at Heller Gallery, New York, NY

Old Venetian Glass (Large print with 72 images), 2013, Digital Print, Framed 48" x 36"
Plate 10 (Cylinder cup with foot), 2019, digital print on Aluminum Dibond, 30" x 40"
Plate 14 (Goblet with bowl cup), 2019, digital print on Aluminum Dibond, 30" x 40"
Plate 16 (Goblet with long stem),2019, digital print on Aluminum Dibond, 30" x 40"
Plate 25 (Goblet with frilly handle), 2019, digital print on Aluminum Dibond 30" x 40"
Plate 44 (Goblet with multipart stem),2019, digital print on Aluminum Dibond 30" x 40"

Named for a method or device for assisting with memory, Memoria Technica materializes the gap between a historical object and the memory of that object.

Memoria Technica shows the limits of memory and materializes the information that is lost in translation when recreating a historical object. The large slow-exposure light drawings were made in total darkness, simply from the memory of an image of a historical glass vessel from the book Old Venetian Glass. In creating the light drawing, the human body becomes the memory device—the memoria technica—corresponding to the parts of the vessel—aptly named the lip, neck, waist, and foot. The blown glass and 3D-printed objects were then made directly from the silhouette of the light drawings to the scale of the original historical objects. This additional level of translation—from 2D drawing to 3D—materializes the memory of the original objects. Although they are still recognizable as vessels, the fuzziness around the edges, the not-quite-sure-of-itself line, becomes a manifestation of a mental space, rather than a physical one.