daniel alexander smith

Gold Standard

Time flattens everything, and technology displaces the past.
We are all eroded, cut up, and reassembled out of order.

Gold Standard Gold Standard
Gold Standard
Gold Standard Gold Standard

An ancient frieze below an altar to Zeus once celebrated eternal victory over chaos. Today it is eroded flat, cut up, and misassembled by archaeologists. Gold Standard references such contradictions. Its images are rendered flat by fragmentation and form. This flattening is a tragic gesture. Time flattens everything, and technology displaces the past. We are all eroded, cut up, and reassembled out of order.

The imagery of Gold Standard points to the fragmentation of the individual initiated by history and accelerated by technology. The form of Gold Standard is anamorphically constructed in order to change shape in accordance with changing lighting conditions. In neutral light, the work reads flat, but in changing light it appears to warp or even break. In this manner, shifting sunlight generates a cyclical erosion of the sculpture's surface.