Penelope Umbrico
Screenshot 2017-09-28 10.36.06 / Orange Filter, 2017
ARTIST STATEMENT:
Photography is as much the subject of my work as it is the medium in which I …
Penelope Umbrico is best known for appropriating images on the internet from sites like Flickr and Craigslist, which she then manipulates to construct large-scale images or installations according to a minimalist aesthetic. Broken Sets (eBay) (2009–11) consists of a series of images found on eBay of broken LCD television screens; the images are cropped, turned on their side, and printed onto metallic paper, resulting in an abstract grid of images that obliquely critiques the banality of consumer culture. She has also created photographic installations from thousands of images found on Flickr of old office desks for sale, as well as sunsets which she discovered is the most photographed subject on the internet. “I use the screen grab or the crop tool the way I’d frame a picture with a camera on the street,” she has said.
ARTIST STATEMENT:
Photography is as much the subject of my work as it is the medium in which I work. I employ traditional photographic techniques and methods of appropriation, extraction, multiple production, and intervention, to explore how we, as a culture, make and use images.
My focus on collective practices in …
Penelope Umbrico is best known for appropriating images on the internet from sites like Flickr and Craigslist, which she then manipulates to construct large-scale images or installations according to a minimalist aesthetic. Broken Sets (eBay) (2009–11) consists of a series of images found on eBay of broken LCD television screens; the images are cropped, turned on their side, and printed onto metallic paper, resulting in an abstract grid of images that obliquely critiques the banality of consumer culture. She has also created photographic installations from thousands of images found on Flickr of old office desks for sale, as well as sunsets which she discovered is the most photographed subject on the internet. “I use the screen grab or the crop tool the way I’d frame a picture with a camera on the street,” she has said.
