Over the past several years, Zac Hacmon has created a distinctive body of tile sculptures that subvert traditional notions of security, architecture, and identity. He transforms industrial materials such as four by four-inch ceramic tiles and safety grab bars into disorienting, confrontational forms that challenge assumptions about power and security.

Dispositif  brings together five works that engage crucial debates about political structures in the built environment. Hacmon’s tile objects investigate the everyday architectural landscape from domestic to institutional structures. He addresses the relationship between the individual and the social apparatus by questioning their coexistence. His work calls attention to aspects of regulation mediated through contemporary architecture.

The French term "dispositif," translated as "device," is a key term developed by Michel Foucault, referring to institutional practices and administrative mechanisms that exercise power within the social body. Hacmon attempts to profane these institutional structures, by creating a new type of architecture, a non-declared one, with a call for use and no clear function. The act of concealment with four by four-inch tiles is charged with a false feeling of nostalgia while the grab bars hold potential for individual access. The sculptures reflect on the viewer’s impulse to act within the regulatory aspects of affordance.

Dispositif (Part II)

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