Craig Kalpakjian
American (New York City, New York, 1961)Somewhat paradoxically, nothingness is at the heart of Craig Kalpakjian's art. His subject matter consists of the banal and forgettable world of generic office interiors: plastic garbage cans, fluorescent lighting fixtures, and the corners where linoleum, white semi-gloss paint, and plastic baseboards meet.
Kalpakjian uses digital rendering and modeling techniques to "document" spaces that look and seem familiar, but which are actually artificial constructions of his own mind. Corridor, a continuous projection of a digitally-modeled curving hallway (drawn from Walter Gropius's Social Welfare Office in Dessau, Germany [1927-29]), is one attempt to inject life and warmth into the highly rational spaces associated with modernist architecture. In relation to this work, Kalpakjian wrote "Although they are often seen as institutional or bureaucratic, I prefer to call the places I depict simply 'shared' spaces."
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