Couch Surfing begins with the age-old tradition of the master copy: learning through careful observation and imitation of another artist’s brushstrokes, color, and composition. It is slow, tedious, intimate work in an economy whose general motto is cheaper, faster, easier. AI generates an image in seconds. Furniture arrives flat-packed. A penny saved is a penny earned.

Six of the seven couch-scaled paintings use average dimensions established with AI as the framework for hand-painted master copies of Monet’s Water Lilies at the Musée de l’Orangerie. The seventh, based on a painting at the Musée Marmottan Monet, is flocked and references its mass reproduction by IKEA. Together, they are augmented through meta-devices of reduction and redaction: exposed linen, transparencies, geometric shapes, and black mourning veils that obscure as much as they reveal.

They surround ViewMaster, an installation built around that anchor of the living room—the entertainment system—part monolith, part pedestal, part shrine. Sand vitrines shift into new impressions, a plastic plant lives indefinitely, and my deceased partner’s ashes occupy the shelves. The only thing missing is the couch. There is no place to rest.

CURRENT

October 30 - December 19

COUCH SURFING: Master Copies in the Age of Fast Furniture

DAINA MATTIS

UPCOMING

Title TBD

January 8 - February 20

ALEX DIAMANT

PAST

BOBBIE OLIVER

FIELD WORK

September 9 - October 24

MARY JONES

RESERVATIONS

June 5 - July 31

FATEMEH BURNES

THE EIGHTH VEIL

April 17 - May 30

WILL HUTNICK

TIME'S A GOON

February 27 - April 11

KUTAY TUFEKCI

C0LL3C70R 613

January 9 - February 21