In April 2016, I watched Chris Matthews of MSNBC interview Donald Trump. I observed, for the first time in his campaign, Trump seemingly off balance, and not full of his usual confidence and narcissistic bravado. Considering his normally unflappable nature, this seemed odd. I decided that I needed to capture this somehow. I began to photograph the TV screen with my iPhone and took about 300 photos in less than 20 minutes, using the high-speed, multi-shot function of the camera. With those images printed out, I began to build collages that capture Trump’s multiple personalities.
In these works, the truly conflicted and disturbing nature of Trump is revealed. Creepy, contradictory, binary, multi-layered and unsettling which only starts to reveal the real persona. Dismantling, cutting, disassembling, rearranging then reassembling this imagery is the essence of Dis-Constructing Trump!
I spent most of May 2016 at the American Academy in Rome as a visiting artist. I arrived there with many hundreds of these color printouts of Trump that would eventually become this collage series. Having limited resources at the Academy, I did what came most naturally - I began cutting, organizing, taping and collaging together these many disparate pieces of Trump. I worked primarily from instinct, which lead to this unique solution. Back in New York, I photographed the collages and then printed an extra-large selection, perfectly conveying Trump’s oversized ego, his “Trumped-up” personality and the showmanship of his existence.
