August 17, 2010
Jim Dingilian’s Bottled Smoke
“Jim Dingilian uses candle smoke to create drawings inside glass bottles that depict suburban fringe areas such as the edges of parking lots, the backs of shopping centers, and patches of woods between housing developments.”
(Top photo installation is from Hunter College Art Galleries’ 2010 group show entitled Smoke + Mirrors / Shadows + Fog.)
(Another photo, after the fold…)
“The miniature scenes I depict are of locations on the edge of suburbia which seem mysterious or even slightly menacing despite their commonplace nature. The bottles add to the implied narratives of transgression. When found by the sides of roads or in the weeds near the edges of parking lots, empty liquor bottles are artifacts of consumption, delight, or dread. As art objects, they become hourglasses of sorts, their drained interiors now inhabited by dim memories.”
–Jim Dingilian
Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design



























