| IQ
Questions: Ever
since I was a kid I was made to understand that standardized tests
were how society figured out how smart or dumb I was. Standardized
tests determined my overall intelligence, whether or not I would
continue to the next grade, what job I might have in the armed
forces and if I would go to college or not. Because of this, these
tests became somewhat of a stressful subject in my life, generating
a type of anxiety that I only experience when I'm faced with these
tests. That anxiety can be most closely associated with the temporary
lose of all intelligence, thought, or reason; i.e. the moment
during the test when the words in the questions become jumbled
and twisted, removed from any practical context or logic. During
the exams I would always find myself manically conscious of the
time and frantically rereading if Joe was traveling faster then
Jim as they simultaneously headed in separate trains to opposite
sides of the country. What I found out later in life was that
I was not alone in my anxiety. Most people that have been put
through these tests (which consists of almost everyone in the
United States of America), has felt the same way. They all seem
to get panicky and uncomfortable at the shear idea of taking a
standardized exam. It is from the observation of this collective
anxiety and an interest in how IQ test questions are designed
and evaluated that I found the inspiration for this series of
prints. The intent of the work is to put the art viewer in the
situation of an exam, confronting them with a series of questions
that they recognize from previous encounters. However, within
these questions, the viewer is presented with different messages
then they are accustomed too, ranging from logic to ethical commentary.
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