Deconstructing Trump!
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 10 minutes, using
the high-speed, multi-shot function. With those images 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, I’ve only started to reveal the real
persona. Dismantling, cutting, disassembling, rearranging then reassembling this
imagery is the essence of Deconstructing 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 series. Having limited resources at the Academy, I did what
came most naturally - I began cutting and collaging together these many disparate
versions. I worked primarily from instinct, which lead to this unique solution. Back in
New York, I photographed the works and printed an extra-large selection which
perfectly conveys Trump’s oversized ego, his “Trumped-up” personality and the
showmanship of his existence, as the photos are printed images of a TV broadcast.
