Isaac Sachs
Artist Statement
In the early months of the pandemic, I spent many hours wandering the public cemetery across the street from my apartment. One style of gravestone stood out - glossy black granite, with photographic images in halftone engravings too detailed to have been done by hand. Freed from the bounds of what had previously been possible to depict in carved stone, many of these gravestones depict fantastical landscapes, sometimes with superimposed portraits of the deceased. Some scenes seem to show a favorite place, while others represent an idealized paradise, but none exist completely outside of reality. The polished stones reflect a world outside them, both spiritually and physically; they are impossible to view without seeing their surroundings in them.
Isaac Sachs | Portland, OR