Dr. Wilk D.D.S., Exam Room 1, Instrument Tray, 2010 by Mark Lyon
There is nothing pleasant about the doctor's office. In fact, it seems as if the designers and architects responsible for these spaces routinely go out of their way to create dingy or sterile environments. But what if the fluorescent view from the dentist's chair wasn't of crumbling ceiling tiles, but instead a mountain vista? Somewhere along the line, somebody proposed this improvement upon the institutional aesthetic and giant photographic murals were pasted up in waiting rooms around the world.
While this ridiculous decorating trend has since fallen out of favor, institutional vistas still exist—I know this for a fact because in his series Landscapes for the People contender Mark Lyon hunts down and photographs these interiors and the laughably absurd juxtapositions that they create.
Mark writes:
These wall sized photographic murals seem to serve a psychological function, given their potentially intimidating or banal locations like dental room and laundromats. These landscape murals allow the viewer an alternate mindset to nerve racking procedures or the mundane activities of everyday life. Photographs from "Landscapes for the People" use the peculiar relationship between found images and operative items. The resulting photographs of these locations document the strange play of the functional environment and the idealized psychological landscape.
Dr. Carpenter D.M.D., Exam Room, Dental Implants, 2010 by Mark Lyon
In viewing Mark's images the eye is immediately drawn to the landscape, but it doesn't stay there for long. The feeling of serenity is replaced with a moment of confusion as the eye and the mind try to reconcile the appearance of electrical outlets, flat-screen televisions, and other non-descript objects of industrial design within the frame. The entire image is flattened into a kind of surreal, hilarious collage of the ideal and the decidedly less-than-ideal.
Previously, Mark was one of the runners-up for the 2009 Aperture Portfolio Prize (along with Alejandro Cartagena) and his work is also being exhibited alongside Hot Shots Curtis Mann and Cara Phillips in American ReConstruction, on view through June 12th at Winkleman Gallery. You can see more work at Mark's website.
p.s. Aperture is accepting 2010 Portfolio Prize submissions through July 14th!