Right On

Dominguez is interested in the way cosmetic repairs tell a story about how people cope with a damaged object —from the precious to the resourceful. “I found it interesting that some people were very meticulous about the way they taped their tail lights, matching the color, trying to make it nearly invisible, while others took a more desperate angle and just used whatever they had and taped it up at whatever angle just to keep the parts held together,” he says.

“[It’s trying] to solve a utilitarian problem as well as an aesthetic one, and then in a sense performing this action by driving the car. This act of performance, considering the car as an extension of the self and being public facing, reflected an unconscious deep-rooted artistic sensibility in a way that something more immediate like fashion did not. I wanted to explore this idea further – [the] reflection of a person.”

Mixtape features 16 works, each piece celebrating the equalizing force of ‘drive’ and the individual’s relationship with the material world. The shattered headlights nursed by duct tape become semiotic displays subsisting at the intersection of damage and repair. The works engage with the viewer by finding common ground in these utilitarian objects that are often overlooked or discarded. For Dominguez, these ‘tape jobs’ not only represent attempts to rectify the past (perhaps by an accident or crash) but they collide with an understanding of utilitarian resourcefulness. The outcome? His works turn the utilitarian ‘repair’ into the aesthetic and artistic.

By taking mundane, often overlooked objects, and reframing them in an artistic context, Dominguez challenges the assumptions we may have about art and conservation. He seeks to find an entry point into the work that is wide and almost non-conceptual, allowing the viewer to see deeper layers of the piece. “I’m still interested in going deeper with the work, what it brings up for me, but I think growing up feeling sort of alienated from ‘Art’, I have a tendency to create something for which that alienated person may feel,” he says. Dominguez’s practice galvanizes us to find joy in the quotidian and offers new definitions of what resonance can look and feel like.

Drew Dominguez is a multidisciplinary artist currently based in New York City. He works with a range of mediums from photography to sculpture, to assemblage, and through his work, encourages us to confront the interiority of our own worlds, inviting introspection into what is deemed to be spectacle. Drew’s work has been exhibited in solo and group shows in New York City, and he also runs the independent imprint Good English Publications which publishes small runs of artist books and zines. Drew will be pursuing an MFA in New Genres at Hunter College this fall.