Lauren Comito
Lauren Comito’s work incorporates the use of technology and everyday ephemera that is habitually utilized by a mass audience. Specifically her work looks closely at the way images are created, retrieved, circulated, and stored. For example, she has a body of work inspired by the correlation between the world of advertising and memory, in particular Edward Bernays’ development of public relations. Employing Sigmund Freud’s writings on psychoanalysis, Bernays paved the way for the world of marketing and advertising through his use of focus groups, which investigated people’s emotional connections to products. Comito mines her own archive of personal digital photography of places she has lived, pairing different packaging containers that came from goods or consumables she associated with that place. Her work alternates between traditional art marking techniques and digital processes. These incorporate barcodes and QR codes linked to various types of media, including stop motion animations, image slideshows and video. The barcodes are also linked to the actual products purchased. QR code and barcode function doubly in Comito’s work, as a gateway to layers of personal history, and as a formal visual pattern. Comito notes that visual codes of this type have an indeterminate lifespan, which mirrors the ebb …
Lauren Comito’s work incorporates the use of technology and everyday ephemera that is habitually utilized by a mass audience. Specifically her work looks closely at the way images are created, retrieved, circulated, and stored. For example, she has a body of work inspired by the correlation between the world of advertising and memory, in particular Edward Bernays’ development of public relations. Employing Sigmund Freud’s writings on psychoanalysis, Bernays paved the way for the world of marketing and advertising through his use of focus groups, which investigated people’s emotional connections to products. Comito mines her own archive of personal digital photography of places she has lived, pairing different packaging containers that came from goods or consumables she associated with that place. Her work alternates between traditional art marking techniques and digital processes. These incorporate barcodes and QR codes linked to various types of media, including stop motion animations, image slideshows and video. The barcodes are also linked to the actual products purchased. QR code and barcode function doubly in Comito’s work, as a gateway to layers of personal history, and as a formal visual pattern. Comito notes that visual codes of this type have an indeterminate lifespan, which mirrors the ebb and flow of information content in social media.
She has had solo exhibitions in Brooklyn at Slag Gallery and Idiosyncrasy Gallery. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Projekt 722 in Brooklyn, Touch Gallery in Cambridge, and Icebox Projects at Crane Arts in Philadelphia, among other venues.
Courtesy of Michael Steinberg Fine Art
