Stacy Conover
Artist Statement
As we walk through life we experience the "outside"
world "inside" ourselves. Our eyes bring to us the images
of this outside world we call reality. Our common sense
then dictates our comprehension and reaction. We are grounded
within reason, habit, association, and familiarity. Our sense
of reality rests on the familiarity of experience. The familiarity
of everyday things are, to some degree, familiar by way of their
context. In other words, it is the experience of the recognizable
situation in which something exists that contributes to our sense
of that thing's realness. The re-contexualization of commonplace
objects creates an unfamiliar, altered reality. Transforming an
experience of reality into an image, as in a painting, can be
a form of loosing context. When two images, both lacking
their original experience, are placed next to one another a new,
unknown context is constructed.
I am interested in the displacement of objects by means of a thoughtful
connection. By linking dissimilar elements I want things to become
detached from their familiar existence and in turn find a way
to escape the blinding limitations of habitual existence. This
re-contextualization of the familiar challenges our assumptions.
These goals of mine are in direct association with the tradition
of Surrealism. Pierre Mabille, notes surrealism's concern with
challenging the familiar:
"The main value of surrealism seems to me to have been the reintroduction of the marvelous into daily experience. It has been taught that if reality appeared deadly dull, this is because man did not know how to see, his glance being limited by an education deliberately designed to blind him. . . ." (Matthews, J.H, The Imagery of Surrealism, p.256)
In my work I hope that by linking two aspects of daily experience,
where each standing alone might seem "deadly dull",
a response unbeknownst to habit or reason will
transpire. The elements depicted in my paintings are done in a
realistic way, a mere reproduction of an immediate reality. Yet
the space they share shifts their truthfulness into something
unrealistic. Our minds do not allow us to be comfortable with
the sight of these things out of their place.
The disorientation of familiar things caused by placing them in
unfamiliar relationships is key to surrealist strategies. If an
object is separated from its normal place or function, the innate
connections that are associated with certain objects are broken.
When objects are isolated in this way, irrational elements are
introduced into tangible reality. The image then escapes the principles
of reality, yet it holds on to reality on a physical level.
In looking at Lautreamont's image of the famous surrealist
motto, "the encounter on a dissecting table between an
umbrella and a sewing machine" we notice the use of mundane
objects familiar to us all. Identifiable from daily experience,
these objects have no attraction outside the limits of their use.
It is the dissecting table, seen in association with these two
objects, which creates a disturbance. As a result of rational
thought's resistance to comprehend these objects together, reason
fails us. The simple use of common elements of life pieced together
in a way contradictory to their arrangement in life as we know
it, generates questions dealing with suppositions about the world
and defeats reason.
It is very important to me that these detached images in my paintings
join together in such a way as to create a single coherent work
while maintaining the tension of knowledge and reason, which constantly
tries to separate them. This tension demonstrates the struggle
between knowledge and seeing. Our minds are so quick to put things
into place in regards to how we are used to them that we go through
life half blinded by the frequency of common experiences. We are
so familiar with the individual elements in terms of the way in
which they stand alone that our minds are unable to accept their
connection on a physical level or as a truth. Because the entirety
of the paintings are done in a more or less realistic manner,
regardless of the conjunction of two separate localities, the
subject matter is expected to follow suit. In my paintings I am
attempting to defy common sense and reason in order to create
a believable unreality.
One way of creating this seamless conjunction is the use of monochrome
colors. Contemporary American painter Mark Tansey was attracted
to monochrome because ". . . .this simple but versatile syntax
was shared by art, fiction, and photographic reality, it made
possible another level of pictorial fiction where aspects of each
could commune. . . .The picture could work as a hybrid form equidistant
between the functions of painting, illustration, and photography."
(Danto, Arthur, Mark Tansey: Visions and Revisions, p.128)
When the viewer perceives the unlikely synthesis I am creating,
a tension or conflict arises. Mark Tansey also plays with
the notion of conflict. "Conflict," notes Tansey, "is
the easiest notion [from which] to begin developing a narrative:
one thing versus another. . . .crises and conflicts were results
of oppositions and contradictions and these were what was necessary
to activate or motivate a picture. Magritte's work also led me
to wonder if this sort of conflict could take place on other levels
of content, more quietly, internally, more plausibly. Could a
conventional picture include many less apparent crises- the way
everyday life does- without the use of overt surrealistic devices?"
(Freeman, Judi, Mark Tansey, p.39)
Tansey's Purity Test demonstrates a conjunction between
two separate localities. A band of Native Americans stand on a
rocky overlook onto Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty. This
juxtaposition lies on the conjunction of two separate time periods.
Smithson's Spiral Jetty did not exist at the same time
these Indians might have stood above the Great Salt Lake but they
have come together as two of Tansey's trajectories, portrayed
seamlessly within the same picture frame. An aspect that is different
between many of Tansey's works and my work is that Tansey's
works refers to deeply "inside" jokes. His works become
a byproduct of the complex language and history of art making.
The spiral jetty is meant to be a pure earthwork, free from the
institutional art world. Only New York critics could see this
work as pure, while Indians would ascribe meaning to it. My works
are based on the linking of two common and familiar localities,
not the meaning of their connection
While my intentions are related to certain Surrealist ideas, I
do not create new forms within my paintings as many of the surrealist
painters do. Some surrealists are committed to a process of spontaneous
automatism. A process that is believed to reveal the true functioning
of thought, that is, thought without reason or rationality. Surrealists
in general believe in a superior reality that has been neglected
by this rational thought. Automatism as a process is a means to
the subconscious via impulses. This process can lead to the creation
of images holding no resemblance to the physical world, images
that are complete derivations of one's imagination.
Instead of using automatism as a means of producing random images,
I am more interested in finding a thoughtful association between
two elements in order to create a connection. The image is predetermined
before the painting process begins. Reason is neglected not in
the painting process, but instead in the conflict between the
elements placed together. The main obstacle becomes how to make
these two separate localities become one. Although at times their
true physical realities vary greatly in scale, they are portrayed
next to one another on a seemingly equal scale. Or, the uneven
scale becomes the force that creates a conflict between the two,
perhaps generating an unsettling feeling within the painting.
The way in which each are depicted, in other words, the
way in which they are painted, are also equivalent, creating another
way that I synthesize two dissimilar elements.
The only moment of unreality in my painting is the conjunction
of two disparate localities. This is a common quality in
Magritte's work as well. Tied to the visible world, Magritte is
hesitant to depart far from it. When he did depart from it, he
did it with such belief that he seemed to be reinventing nature
rather than depicting it. Magritte's most powerful source of information
was keeping in touch with direct experience. His visual imagination
was stimulated by direct perception of the world around him. "The
direct stimulation of the real world united his extraordinary
powers of perception and organization and provided tangible matter
on which his imagination could act." (Gablik, Suzi, Magritte,
p.18)
Magritte wanted to put an end to our sense of the familiar, to
disrupt our habits, and question the "real" world. He
uses his paintings as an attack to the preconceived ideas and
commonplaces of society. As in my paintings, Magritte assaults
these preconceived expectations in order to create a shock or
surprise. His paintings challenge vision, which tends to be interpreted
by what the mind wants to see. Magritte brought together familiar
objects in such a way as to evoke something unfamiliar. The familiar
objects maintain their semblance to the world from which they
came, while an unfamiliarity is felt. Of this Magritte says:
". . . .the commonplace knowledge we have of the world and
its objects does not sufficiently justify their representation
in painting; the naked mystery of things may pass as unnoticed
in painting as it does in reality. . . .If the spectator finds
that my paintings are a kind of defiance of 'common sense', he
realizes something obvious. I want nevertheless to add that for
me the world is a defiance of common sense." (Gablik, p.10)
In some of Max Ernst's paintings, two different and distinct elements
are brought together producing a super-image that perhaps obliterates
the realities on which they were based. He creates worlds that
shift between the cosmic and the microscopic. Ernst's images escape
reason and calculation, at times bringing distant realities close
together. His matter-of-factness within his paintings heightens
their believability. Ernst had an obsession with reality, creating
illogical yet convincing depictions representing the relationship
between consciousness and the essence of the world. (Gatt, Giuseppe,
Max Ernst, p. 9)
Unlike the genre of most automatistic processes, Ernst's automatism
is based more on the sudden recognition of forms that were not
anticipated. Like my paintings, the images are not a product of
a 'dream state of mind', but instead they themselves generate
responses by altering the visual meanings of things. (Gatt, p.11)
His work depends on inherent contradictions: "its is
dreamlike and unconscious, but it also reflects existence and
reveals a critical consciousness fully aware of comparative values."
The irony found within Ernst's work is based on the question of
what part reality plays, whether a reality actually exists within
the painting or whether it exists within the observer making sense
of unfamiliar sights. (Gatt, 23)
In Ernst's frottages, the collaging of eclectic materials,
form is created spontaneously. Creation begins when the impediments
of logic and reason are silenced. To an extent, this collaging
process is used in my works. Many of my paintings start out with
two images superimposed onto one another. Two images are literally
united to create one. Max Ernst's technique is more of an spontaneous
one whereas the collaging I do involves a thoughtful connection.
My paintings bring into question the notion of a "reality".
Each element is an aspect of reality, but by putting two opposing
elements together are their "known" reality becomes
nullified. Perhaps it is the understanding of the impossibilities
within each work that allow the images to exist in our minds'
reality. Is it the making-sense-of that creates a reality, or
is it an actual acceptance of the image that makes it 'real'?