Don’t call it a comeback

Any moment now, stereograms—those abstract images that produce a 3-D image when stared at—will make their comeback alongside other ’90s phenomena, like flannel babydoll dresses and the Pokémon craze. Leisel Whitlock’s series Sacrifice Zones harkens to those abstracted images, made up of penetrating, discernible, tiny, vivid parts. The viewer’s eye searches within the overlapping blue circles and black diamonds for a horizon or an outline of a man—and sometimes is rewarded with one.

Whitlock, a Bay Area-based artist, explores perception and distance with this mixed-media series, and she defines sacrifice zones as places harmed by environmental damage or economic and social disinvestment, which happens to be an area that we had a lot to reflect on in the ‘90s and still do today. Don’t call it a comeback.