
Throws Left, from the series "A History of Graph Paper"
<p>John Houck creates works that simultaneously embrace and resist digital technology through the use of repetitive processes. To make <em>Throws Left</em> Houck began with a childhood artifact—a box of baseball cards—that for him served as a tool for exploring memory outside of psychoanalysis. The artist first photographed the cards and their box in the manner of a commercial studio arrangement. He then used the resulting print as the backdrop for a new image of the same objects, repeating this process several times while modifying the composition or object in each iteration. The final image appears collaged or digitally altered but is in fact free of any such interventions. Instead, the spatially puzzling, multilayered composition reflects the idea that memory is rarely a product of systematized facts or data.</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 2014
- Medium
- Inkjet print
- Dimensions
- Image/paper, approx./sight: 75 × 57 cm (29 9/16 × 22 1/2 in.); Frame: 78.1 × 60.3 × 3.9 cm (30 3/4 × 23 3/4 × 1 9/16 in.)
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Artist
- John Houck
Artist

Photography
John Houck is an American photographer based in Los Angeles whose practice centers on color, light, and the formal properties of the photographic image itself. Working with digital and analog processes, he constructs carefully composed scenes that examine perception and the materiality of vision. Represented by Marianne Boesky Gallery, his work investigates how photography mediates experience and constructs meaning through framing and color relationships.
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More by John Houck
Record
Verified by WattsOS- Artist
- John Houck
- Year
- 2014
- Medium
- Inkjet print
- Dimensions
- Image/paper, approx./sight: 75 × 57 cm (29 9/16 × 22 1/2 in.); Frame: 78.1 × 60.3 × 3.9 cm (30 3/4 × 23 3/4 × 1 9/16 in.)
- Watts ID
- WW-2014-108242
Source
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified

