Small White House
Tin House
Play House
Small Brick House
Phillips Garage House
cinder block house
Cotton Farm House
Air Base House
Axis Gallery 2019
Axis Gallery 2019
Axis Gallery 2019
Axis Gallery 2019
Axis Gallery 2019
What does a house symbolize and what symbolizes a house.
When asked to draw a house a child will most often draw a rectangle and put an isosceles triangle on top. After adding a door and a window or two you have the standard drawing of a house. This rudimentary shape has become a universal symbol of a house. With computers this symbol has become simplified even more to become an icon. The “home” icon is used to return the user to the start, to back the user out of complexity and return the user to a place of relative safety.
Safety is what a house symbolizes. A house is a place of refuge, a shelter from the hostile elements. As a house becomes a home the sense of safety is it extended. It becomes more then just physical safety but extends to social and psychological safety.
With this collection of photographs Gilles is exploring the visual meaning of the house shape. To be clear this is not a series about houses but only about that rudimentary shape that is often used to symbolize a house.
Richard Gilles received his BA in Fine Arts from San Francisco State University in 1981. While pursuing the practice of art, Gilles has also worked as a papermaker, bookbinder, and printer. He currently lives and works in Folsom California. Gilles has exhibited nationally and his work is included in the permanent collections of the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida, the Southeast Museum of Photography, Daytona Beach, Florida and the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, Davis, California.