Lost at the Beach. Image courtesy of the artist
New York-based architect-turned-artist Erin O?Keefe plays tricks with our perceptions with her photographs that look like graphic paintings. The Deutsche Bank Lounge Artist for Frieze New York 2022 speaks to LUX about the transition from being an architecture professor to an artist, how the disciplines are interconnected, and her inspirations from the original Bauhaus art school in Weimar Germany. Interview by Darius Sanai
LUX: Was your dream when you were younger to be an architect or an artist"

Erin O?Keefe: I always wanted to be an artist. Although I guess what that actually means is an open question. Architecture provided a way of supporting myself that felt super interesting, and teaching meant I could explore theoretical issues that have turned out to be relevant to my art practice. LUX: Were you always fascinated by the crossover between architecture and art"

EOK: Thinking about how architecture is represented in painting and photography has always been a source of fascination. I particularly love the wrongness of space in early Renaissance paintings ? it actually feels pretty liberating. And I?m interested in the fact that most of what I know about architecture has come through images rather than visiting the actual buildings ? that seems perverse, but it?s true. So you need to become a good translator to make a bridge between a picture of the thing and the thing itself, but I think it?s actually impossibl...