I’m fascinated by the persuasive power of photography and its unique role in shaping our image of the world and negotiating what we believe to be real or true. As two-dimensional fragments of time and space all photographs vacillate between fact and fiction, concealing as much as they reveal. Exploiting the camera’s monocular point of view for both Representations and Nature Morte, I create two-dimensional photographic documents of three-dimensional drawings, remaking the three-dimensional to appear as crude and simple line drawings. By confusing two distinct methods of representation and encouraging the observation of subtle detail, I’m asking viewers to examine the deceptive nature of appearances and re-consider the false transparency of the photograph.

Cynthia Greig surveys contemporary art spaces from across the globe, placing the gallery itself on display. Her elegantly minimal photographs present an unexpected shift in perspective, rendering its interior spaces as a vast landscape—an uncharted territory with its own particular history. Concentrating on minute and overlooked details, her images expose the traces of human presence and time embedded within the starkness of its architecture. Greig deconstructs the white cube, expanding on the themes of vanitas and manifest destiny, and the delicate balance between the permanent and ephemeral.

For this exhibition, Cynthia Greig surveys contemporary art spaces from across the globe, placing the gallery itself on display. Her elegantly minimal photographs present an unexpected shift in perspective, rendering its interior spaces as a vast landscape—an uncharted territory with its own particular history. Concentrating on minute and overlooked details, her images expose the traces of human presence and time embedded within the starkness of its architecture. Greig deconstructs the white cube, expanding on the themes of vanitas and manifest destiny, and the delicate balance between the permanent and ephemeral.

Photographs and a video loop documenting the transformation of the floor and wall in my Detroit studio to resemble a section of Fred Torres Gallery in New York, in advance of my exhibition, "The Nearest Distance," October 2014.

"The sequence of video stills reveals the process of recreating in her studio an accurate approximation of the particular gallery space she has photographed. In doing so, Greig draws attention to the language of exhibition display, and the processes that recur naturally when preparing gallery walls for exhibition. The video reveals painterly gestures as subtle overlays of white tones suggest spatial depth, and uneven sections of the wall patched with plaster filler evoke the textures of oil or acrylic paintings. When the wall is sanded, primed and finished, the illusion of a flat, expansive, pristine surface transpires. The wall becomes as pleasurable and satisfying to look at as the art that hangs on it. These images draw attention to the grammar and values of modernism, and question the boundaries and overlaps between art and environment, where does art begin or end? Here, Greig reveals that it begins and ends in awareness and in its making."

— Text from Peter Finnemore's essay, "Overlook."