DECORATIVE PROTECTION < PROTECTING DECORATION, 2010
Influenced by a 1980’s decorative metal gate advertisement urging Los Angeles residents to buy ‘non prison-looking bars’ for a key to their own security, Ziperstein’s mutated tableaux depicts a pair of skewed windows transposed with a photographic view of a lusciously overgrown domestic garden in L.A., decades of debris collected and scattered about including lamps, cars, shoes, rotting wood, and stage sets. This would-be future site of an archeologist’s dig on American culture is seen through a domestic curtain featuring hand-drawn security bars and offering sporadic views of the garden. Two altered slip cast ceramic figurines adorn the windows, equally protected with decorative armor hats shielding their faces. Engaging and fanciful, what initially appears as a celebration ultimately critiques the politics and economy of protecting ones security and domestic space. Ziperstein asks us who, what, and why are we protecting ourselves from modern living if only to feed into a paranoid American culture?