About the work
The body emerges from brown linen, modeled in light and shadow. Where the face should be, a hand-painted code introduces a digital threshold into the painting.
When a screen is raised between the viewer and the work, the encounter changes. The viewer’s body remains in the room, but their attention moves elsewhere. The screen becomes a shield: it allows us to observe without being seen, to judge without meeting another person’s gaze, and to participate in shaping an identity without being immediately accountable for the consequences.
At the same time, the viewer raises the phone in front of their own face. For a moment, they mirror the figure before them: a physical body whose face has been replaced by a screen.
The work considers how digital distance has changed the way we approach other people. The identity assigned to the subject is part of what is at stake, but the deeper subject is the viewer’s own way of looking: whether another person is recognized as a human presence or reduced to an image that can be interpreted, judged, and rewritten.
The viewer’s judgment alters the subject, but it also reveals the viewer.
Technology did not civilize the gaze. It gave it distance, power, and anonymity.
About the series
Terms of Viewing takes its name from a double meaning. In the digital world, we agree to terms and conditions before we are allowed to see, usually without reading them. In the physical world, we must come to terms with what we see, with what we do, and with who we become because of it.
One agreement asks only for a click. The other asks us to take responsibility. Each work in the series places the viewer between the two.
About the title
Face Value extends that question. To take someone at face value is to accept or judge what appears on the surface. In this work, however, the face is no longer entirely under the subject’s control. Someone else can assign both its meaning and its perceived value.
Artwork details
- Year: 2026
- Medium: Acrylic on sized, unprimed, brown-dyed linen with hand-painted QR code and interactive browser-based component
- Dimensions: 36 Ă— 24 Ă— 0.75 in (H Ă— W Ă— D)
- Edition: Unique work
The images encountered through the interactive component were not digitally generated. Both images, FACE and DEFACE, were physically painted on a separate strip of the same sized linen, reinforcing the tension between tactile creation and digital circulation.
Included with the acquisition
The original painting, the companion painted linen strip, the digital assets supporting the interactive component, and a signed certificate of authenticity are included.
The artist intends to maintain the digital experience at its current address. Should that address someday disappear, the work would not simply cease to function. The failed attempt to retrieve a face would become part of the work: an absence that speaks to a world in which identity can be constructed, circulated, and erased beyond the subject’s control. Both images would remain, painted on the companion linen strip; only the path to them would be lost.
