In the first two weeks of February, shares in the Canadian Mining Company Irwin Resources Inc (IWRS) were trading at a record high. In the third week of February, I received an unsolicited email from “Istvanffy Paradi.” The essential information—an advertisement Irwin Resources rising stock—was contained in 12.2 KB image attachment, slightly slanted text written in a rainbow of colors against a pale green background. The Off-register low-resolution slogans were followed by a long paragraph of incoherent text in the body of the message that was clearly engineered to evade email filters. The content of the advertisement was contained with in a nearly illegible image and the unintelligible text attached to it only served the purpose of fooling a computerized filter. The information is in the image, the text is a decoy.


This show consists of three pieces—a large sculpture, a framed photograph and an animation on a free-standing monitor. The three works consider the notion of deskilling in relationship to art production and commercial construction. The three portable walls that have occupied the gallery since it opened three years ago are stacked in the center of the space to form a large sculpture made out sheetrock, plywood, metal studs, joint compound and white paint.

On the south wall is a lightjet print of a scan of a box of Westpac joint compound—the front and bottom of the box are shown at a 1:1 scale on a black ground. On the floor near the west wall is a black and white animation shown on a monitor. The animation lasts two minutes and is looped indefinitely. The triple-chevron logo from the box is a geometric abstraction of Westpac Materials’ two initials. As the logo spins clockwise 90 degrees, it becomes a graphic representation of the three stacked walls. Westpac is the only brand of joint compound carried by Home Depot stores in Southern California. Home Depot—a business modeled on the do-it-yourself alternative to the commercial lumberyard—is now the second-largest retailer in the United States with dominant share of the building materials market. The do-it-yourself business model is inextricably linked to deskilling across the construction industry that eliminates the need for trained labor or trades in favor of cheaper “unskilled” labor. This effect is particularly evident in Southern California where a surplus of undervalued illegal labor and simple construction methods have all but eliminated labor organization in the private sector (with the exception of the film industry). Home Depot is further implicated in its unofficial role as a distributional center of an undocumented labor force. The underside of each box of Westpac joint compound is printed with the verse from Jesus’ first sermon upon his return to Nazareth: He has come to heal the broken hearted; To proclaim liberty to the captive (Luke 4:18, Gal. 5:22).