Often the smallest image files on the internet and sometimes created by truncating a much larger image to the 32 pixel by 32 pixel format, the favicon acts as a type of superscript icon hinting at a websites content or intention. If you're an avid bookmarker of sites, like myself, favicons are familiar and offer guidance but rarely get a closer look or the more detailed consideration as a work of art. Fabian G. Tabibian has rescaled favicons from their restricted pixel widths to large-scale desaturated C prints.

His prints cull from a number of sources, but most notably the websites for branches of the United States Government. Somehow the polite vertical American flag favicon on the Senate's website takes on more ominous tones when converted to black and white and printed poster size, confronting you with its deficient resolution. The collection of prints, which were simply mounted on the wall at the Wassaic Project where I encountered them this past weekend, have also been shown in lightboxes mimicking their original screen-lit existence. In either format they present an eerie portrait of a typically unconsidered element of the internet.

Flag (#Senate), C-Print, 2011

Lightbox versions of Tabibian's favicon series

Eagle, Duratrans in Lightbox, 2011