DRIVE-THRU is a large-scale environmental installation made up of portraits of anonymous fast food workers at night framed through their respective service portals. Each portrait approximates the actual size of the fast-food drive-thru window and the portraits are connected to each other by black expanse simulating the darkness of night. The viewer experiences an ongoing, immersive, nocturnal drive-thru, both haunting and strangely seductive.
DRIVE-THRU relates to Regan’s longstanding dedication to portraying the most disenfranchised members of society in unconventional, painterly ways (influenced by the work of early Dutch painters) while the installation as a whole serves to amplify the corporatization of the authentic and natural world – a central theme in Regan’s recent work.
The project also represents Regan’s interest in reinvigorating the informative and provocative nature of documentary images by pushing the tradition into more cinematic, abstract, and conceptual realms while still preserving its essential function of inciting meaningful, meditative contemplation of the real world.
She is particularly drawn to ubiquitous and mundane cultural manifestations whose significance and implications have been nullified by collective complacency.
An ongoing project now totaling thirty drive-thru portals, Regan literally shot each one while ordering fast food in her car around Los Angeles.