Brett Groves observes in an email to the AP/RC that the “legibility of all things shifts as they travel through time, shedding or accumulating value and significance.” Each of us probably has some such “things” or objects in our drawers, or desks, or cabinets:  security or manila envelopes, plastic bags, and chewing gum wrappers.  Groves’ dissection pixel by pixel elevates these objects to something approaching Platonic ideals. And his screenprinted layers of photographic and hand manipulated transparencies painstakingly reconstruct on paper these ordinary, everyday things.

Groves’ interest in these objects is not particularly focused on their “vesseleness” or “container-like qualities” but on their mundane triviality elevated through what he calls “hyper-focusing.” Unlike the chance encounter of a found object, Groves’ objects are purposefully collected, thoughtfully anticipated and kept in an archive, reserved from the dumpster or the annals of forgotten detritus or office surplus purgatory. Groves’ labor intensive attention, sacrifice of time and material, and transportation into digital space of these objects elevate them into his idealized universe, imbuing each with a sense of calculated “thingness”.

Correspondence 05 (Strike Gently), 2012; Screen print; Paper: 18 1/4 x 16 inches

Interoffice, 2012; Screen print; Paper: 23 1/2 x 18 1/2 inches

Liquors, 2013; Screen print; Paper: 25 x 19 inches

Spearmint,2013; Screen print, aluminum leaf; Paper 17 x 11 1/4 inches