As his artist statement says, TJ Proechel has been living in Minnesota for the past 4 months fixing up foreclosed homes. His series "Dream Homes" focuses on the foreclosure crisis and the people he has met while doing this work. Although he doesn't come right out and say it, his work is really taking a look at the things that people own and what those things mean to those people. Here, these people have worked hard to achieve their goals and to earn their possessions only to have these things taken away. As far as my work goes in similarity, Proechel is exploring the underbelly of what I am looking at. I'd like to learn why different people feel the way they do toward their rooms and their personal spaces. I want to know what these things/places mean to the person(s) that inhabit them and why it's so important or not important to them.
My favorite images from the series are the more dead pan images where the subjects are confronting the camera and therefore the viewer or if there is no person in the image, the viewer is faced with the ruin of the foreclosed home and the abandoned possessions. This confrontation, I believe, really makes the viewer focus on what they're looking at. It takes a very aggressive and straightforward stance and demands some kind of contemplation.
All Images from the series Dream House. No apparent titles.
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