Common Source, a series of works by Zach Gross, examines how
the history of visual language shapes the way we comprehend the
world. The images in this body of work are the results of Gross’
experimentations with the limits of photography and the camera
itself. They feature archetypal forms that are balanced between
abstraction and clear depiction. Through rendering familiar forms as
foreign, the work asks the viewer to question what they are seeing.
This series also examines originality, intellectual property, and
ownership. Gross explores this by entering into a dialogue with
one of the great masters of appropriation, Andy Warhol. Warhol’s
photography archives are the base material for the forms throughout
the works. Warhol used the camera to document his subjects
in a traditionally figurative manner. Gross expands the scale of
representation by rephotographing Warhol’s contact sheets out of
focus and with a camera setting highly sensitive to light. Through
a process of inverting light values, the original compositions are
redistributed into a field of digital artifacts. Light and form become
the predominant subjects of the images.
