magazine. Later I arrived at the idea to simply frame the magazine in its entirety, while highlighting specific images.

 

W: Can you describe the work?

 

Eli Craven: The work consists of carefully selected magazine spreads that are selected to be framed completely intact. Portions of the frames are routed open in order to allow the magazines to protrude from the edges of the frame. The images in the window of the frame then begin to have a conversation with the portion of the magazine outside of the frame. Gravity makes the magazines bend and fall from the sides of the frame creating sculpture that points to the physical nature of the printed image.

 

W: You used magazines as primary material for 'Spread', was the readable content to any relevance in your pick of these magazines?

 

Eli Craven: The readable content is important in some of them, but I was more concerned with finding interesting or complicated images and how covering the descriptive text that directly related to the those images changed how they were read. For example, in "Spread #5", I mainly wanted to single out the image of the young man pinching the woman's nose with vice grip pliers. The image was so odd to me. The text and captions accompanying the image help the reader see celebrity siblings teasing one another, the background text makes the image appear playful. When the image is isolated from its caption it reads completely different and seems violent on its own. Once the image is isolated, relationships to the outside pages then can take place.