Adam Simon, 12 x 3 x 4, 2012, acrylic, PS 310, Brooklyn
12 x 3 x 4 is a mural spanning two floors from the basement cafeteria to the 1st floor of PS 310 Brooklyn. It measures 22 feet in height by 17 feet in width. As referenced by its title, the work is comprised of 12 images repeated 4 times in each of the 3 colors present. Shown in silhouette, the objects are drawn from the lives of elementary school children: a bicycle, a scooter, a laptop, a jump rope, a baseball glove, a ball, a football, a violin, a book, a paintbrush, a microscope and a kite. Artist Adam Simon gathered these images from stock photography originally intended for advertising and magazine production. He used a computer generated program to produce the random order and arrangement of the objects. In contrast, Simon then hand-drew the stencils for each of the objects and hand-painted the computer rendering to scale on the wall.
Deciphering the individual objects within the mural is one of the artwork’s primary attractions. Its bright colors and overlapping forms offer interesting opportunities to study the principals of depth and perception, as well as color theory and what primary colors do when they are combined. As the pieces of the puzzle come together and the forms reveal themselves, viewers can connect with the work over time in different ways drawing on their own personal experiences and memories associated with the objects represented.