Walking up to the collaged and sculpted surface of a Collapse piece is like approaching a twinned mirror: one approaches as though to step into the fold of two facing reflections that are endless, on repeat. Large enough to be a backdrop and appearing made of edges, Collapse is both archive and modern matrix, a trompe l’oeil of the masterpieces that pivot over a displaced Instagram grid. There are thousands of screenshots, small enough for your screen and coded like pixels to come together as the unlikely palette for reproductions of Klimt, Banksy, Matisse, and other masters. Reposting to do more than just repost, Mamiye’s lenticular canvases separate the canvas into two planes based on the viewer’s perspective, panning over two distinct and recognizable compositions when viewed from right to left. Crossing the foreground of Collapse is to activate the dynamism of this act of doubled appropriation––not only do the poor jpegs of an Instagram feed repurpose themselves as these canvases of recognized masterpieces, but the masterpieces themselves also appear to invade each other’s image as the viewer adjusts his vista. In this sense, every doubled portrait does more than proliferate ideas of the copy––they suggest a way of crossing the contexts within a specific artist’s oeuvre or art history thematic that is intrinsic to an artwork’s organization, here made visible in their simultaneous connection and coming apart.
