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.
High Noon