Known for his collaborative photography projects like Invisible Jumpers, Joseph Ford is interested in perception and intervention. His ongoing series, Impossible Street Art, invites artists such as Antonyo Marest, Alex Senna, and MadC to imagine their work in monumental landscapes via a bit of sleight of hand. The artists create trompe-l’œil interventions on Ford’s photographs, which he then documents on an easel in front of that same place to give a sense of what these huge paintings or installations would feel like in situ.

“These new works mostly explore infrastructure in the form of huge concrete constructions—nuclear power plants, dams, fossil fuel power stations,” Ford says. The locations are often connected to the industries and network of energy production, such as hydropower systems, or logistical configurations related to highways and ports.

For example, the nuclear power station “painted” by Skirl is situated in a sprawling nature preserve on England’s east coast, adjacent to the Suffolk & Essex Coast & Heaths National Landscape, and a new plant is currently under construction despite much local opposition.

“These locations are physically in the public domain and dominate their surroundings through their huge scale, but often have restricted access. They are imposed on us—it is impossible not to see them—but it is impossible to engage with them, use them, or sometimes even approach them.” By superimposing street art on otherwise inaccessible sites, Ford and the participating artists address these looming constructions and the nature of energy production as “a way of reclaiming and engaging with them,” he says.

See Ford’s work this month at The Other Art Fair in Chicago, which runs from April 9 to 12. Find more on Instagram.

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Any dog owner can appreciate the kind of unfettered, often visceral reactions canines have to everything from their favorite treats to a scurrying squirrel to another dog passing by the window. Their lack of inhibition and legendary fidelity bring comfort, routine, and goofiness to our daily lives despite their total unawareness of their effects on us. For Stephen Morrison, curiosity and play find their way into vibrant, quirky paintings that “invite viewers to rediscover the magic and absurdity often obscured by the routine,” he says.

Morrison’s practice has lately revolved around trompe l’œil compositions of everyday objects and tableaux in which dogs’ features appear unexpectedly. A snout stands in for the flap of a handbag or juts out from the side of a Pepsi can. His current solo exhibition, Dog Show #5: Field Recordings at SLAG&RX, centers on a series of objects referencing places he worked on the pieces—Paris, New York City, and Maine—that also play important roles in his life.

Morrison’s own memories and connections find their way into his collection of books, foods, photographs, and other items in an almost seek-and-find fashion. At first glance, the tableaux appear simply as collections of everyday things like vases, fruit, and cameras. But upon closer inspection, tiny visages appear along with references to dogs, from bones stitched into patchwork backgrounds to the sleepy face of a pooch in the center of a starfish and a bunch of green grapes with puppy faces. Always relaxed, even sleepy, the dogs’ expressions evoke a calm sweetness, even nostalgia, paired with a sense of abundance.

In this series, the artist grapples with what belonging means, from revisiting his childhood home in Maine to thinking about his past decade in New York City to spending two months in Paris, where, “despite being married to a Frenchman, having many French friends, and having spent considerable time in the city, I had never felt at home,” he says. “The ornate beauty of the architecture and the sense I have of everything being solidly ‘in its place’ makes it hard to feel inspired there for me.” So, he set out to explore that sense of disjointedness and creative conflict.

France is referenced in Morrison’s paintings by backgrounds of toile, or toile de jouy, a fabric design popular in the 18th century that features pastoral scenes, while Maine is represented by patchwork quilts he co-designed with his mother, who actually stitched them before they were incorporated into the works. “By bringing the objects and backgrounds into my dog world, I’ve rewritten my external material world through this lens, creating a new and more uniquely personal vision of these places,” he says.

Morrison will be an artist-in-residence at BUoY in Tokyo this summer, where he’s looking forward to incorporating Japanese textiles into a new series of paintings. He’s also preparing for a pop-up solo exhibition at Lazy Mike Gallery in Seoul and a group exhibition at Hashimoto Contemporary. Dog Show #5: Field Recordings continues through March 28 in New York. See more on the artist’s Instagram.

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