Flattened and disorderly

The compact lenses used for lighthouses are ornate objects that seem more suited to Versailles than any functional setting. Based on an optical lens designed at the turn of the 19^th century, their rapidly changing shapes developed alongside the progressing science of optics. The resulting lenses were adapted to fit the most recent theories on the behavior of light. As such, they appear as much rococo as Rationalist: a morphing collage of concentric rings, facets, and constantly changing arcs in glass.

The exhibition presents an alternate dimension of optical devices, separate from the linear restrictions of Enlightenment thought. These 3D renderings make up an archive of fictional lenses which, alongside cyanotype processes and repurposed objects, remix the historical tools for vision with early film genres and printed documents. Together, they present an irregular archive of containers, surfaces, and lenses connected in various ways to the histories of vision, photography, and surveillance.

A short artist book The Right Eye is presented alongside this exhibition.