When I moved to Los Angeles, I wanted to engage the mythology of celebrity. I was very interested in the movie Chinatown, and decided I should try to find Faye Dunaway. This resulted in a book that documented my attempts to find Ms. Dunaway, psychically and literally.
The volume begins with attempts to give form to the object of a search. Once the paintings become recognizable as Faye Dunaway, I began making collages that placed Faye into fantastic environments. The book moves into more conceptual game playing such as crossing out all the letters in the LA Times except for sequences of F’s, A’s, Y’s and E’s in order to correct the text, to show the faye in everything. I practiced her signature, wrote messages to her on the banks of the LA River, sent mail to every address I could find for her – even a few that came in dreams. I cut her name into my arm, and finally, as evidence that I found her, the book ends with a close up of the folded cover of a magazine with the address label clearly visible: Faye Dunaway, 7709 Willoughby...

christopher@russellarchive.com
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