A Film for the Theatre/A Theatre for the Film, 2018. 12’ x 14’ x 8’  Fiberglass-reinforced plaster, wood, steel, aluminum and cast urethane.   

A Film for the Theatre/A Theatre for the Film

This work was produced for Smoke and Mirrors at the Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, California. 

A Film for the Theatre/ A Theatre for the Film draws from Charlie Chaplin’s film City Lights, and the ornate Los Angeles Theatre building in downtown LA. The stories of the building and the film are intertwined, as Chaplin financed the construction of the theater, rushing the construction so that it would be complete for the premiere of his film. My project translates both the film and the theatre into a hybrid façade, duplicating the theatre’s ornate stonework and a set element from the film which depicts a public sculpture. The details of both the sculpture and the theatre façade are composed from 3D models pulled from the Internet, recombined and digitally fabricated to construct the finished work. Physically superimposed on one another, the sculpture and the façade become a kind of synthetic monument, referencing the ways the artifice of filmmaking has physically inscribed itself on the city of Los Angeles.