144 Plaster Surrogates No.1

"I am working to construct a charade, in which I am surrounded with false pictures: pseudo artifacts which beckon me into the desire to look at a picture, but which are complete in doing just that, and that alone. My paintings don't serve a proper function - how could they? They're only representations, props, and surrogates: not real pictures at all. If I can engineer this charade the way I want, I think I can transform the seemingly innocent act of looking at art into a slightly nightmarish duplication of itself" (J. Deitch, 'The Dakis Joannou Collection', Ostfildern-Ruit, 1996, p.198).