Introduction
to the Plywood Photography
Welcome to the plywood gallery: a collection
of poetic images extracted from junk plywood; a gallery of surrealist
found objects incarnated in the form of useless, factory-processed wood.
This group can be considered another variety of readymade
found art,
and in this case, specifically, readymade plywood art, which
was the result of the urban exploration of an abandoned,
worthless urban space. (side note: for a more detailed explanation of the importance
of abandoned sites, consult Jose Manuel Rojo’s The
Gothic Sentiment within Industrial Archaeology).
The plywood images were cropped from photographs
of the abandoned military barracks in Fort Ord, California, of wooden
boards covering the doorways and windows of derelict buildings. Some
of the boards were recently applied while others showed the fading
effects of long-term weathering. The final result
was seemingly endless row after row of abandoned military buildings
and residential structures, whose dead windows were all covered by
these weathered plywood boards. Walking through the weed-choked streets
was comparable to passing through a haunted gallery or an enchanted,
industrial, daylight crypt.
The reason why these plywood artifacts are splendid
examples of surrealist found objects is that their abstract, poetic
significance transcends their monetary, utilitarian value – i.e.
their social worth, or the lack thereof. To most people, these dirty,
old sheets of plywood are nothing but useless junk, but to the initiated
eye, in contrast, they are poetic treasures: factory-sliced, serendipitous
glimmers of the marvelous that inspire the daydream, the intoxicating
delirium of the poetic interpretation of reality, a poetic
intervention in and of itself.
The above picture (the anonymous drawing
of someone with a feather, next to an irregularly shaped plywood,
hung from the wall), was photographed in a tower next to the weapons-repair
building. Perhaps
the feather that the person is thinking of came from the cyclops parakeet? (Apparently
I'm not the only one who was affected by Fort Ord's
plywood collection.)
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