Agent Orange, Elevator installation, POST, Los Angeles CA 1997

Housepaint on walls.

POST was an artist-run gallery space in downtown Los Angeles founded by HK Zamani (Habib Keradyar). The gallery was in a two-story industrial building. I was invited to make a site-project in the freight elevator, which was manually operated by visitors. I was intrigued by the vertical movement of the semi-open elevator. It felt like watching a film (strip) moving up-and-down. The aged material/surface and the mechanical operation harkened back to another time.

I painted the walls of the shaft in six horizontal bands of color that change as one moves between the floors. I had recently learned of colors that are internationally coded for safety. These colors are used for legibility in a variety of applications – from tools to machines. I painted the interior of the elevator “Safety Orange”. Thinking about the function of the elevator as an “agent”, as well as the chemical weapon used during the Vietnam war, I titled the piece “Agent Orange”.