On the Tarmac: demystifying airport markings across the globe
“To most people, tarmac markings are hieroglyphics writ large: an obscure language that greets us as we glide down toward the earth. It is a code both intimately familiar and radically alien. On the Tarmac re-conceives this code. Designer Dennis Pieprz, who spends countless hours taxiing to distant terminals as part of his work, documented his travels, armed with boundless curiosity and an iPhone. As if collecting postcards along his journey, Pieprz framed images not to convey instructions but to capture vivid patterns and surprising juxtapositions, rigorous geometry and playful shadows. By freeing the tarmac from utility, Pieprz’s photos allow new meanings to emerge, exploring poetry of linework and the ballet of human activity. They are about catching glimpses of the hyper-local amid relentless globalization. They are about slowing the pace and paying attention. Most of all, they are about seeking the sublime in the everyday.”
I wrote the introduction for a book that accompanied an exhibition at the Boston Society for Architecture.
For an exhibition at the Boston Society for Architecture, I curated a selection of photographs by urban designer Dennis Pieprz, who amassed photos of tarmac markings taken from countless window seats. Hundreds of images were displayed in a grid on temporary exhibition walls that, in plan, also resembled a line pattern.
Along with the photographs, I integrated floor graphics that mimicked runway markings. These graphics, however, refused to stay to the horizontal plane: they climbed up the exhibition partitions and onto windows of the gallery. The exhibition created an immersive experience, dropping viewers onto the runway — at once a hyper-local and a dislocating experience.
Expanding on the exhibition interpretive text, I wrote the introductory essay for a book that accompanied the exhibition.