Melissa Dean, artist's statement, 2001
Through the process of thinking about, looking at, and creating art, I have found sensibilities, necessities, and loyalties in myself never before considered. I involve myself in formalist ideals of aesthetic and minimalist notions of objects within space, both having an often intangible sense of grace and refinement. Conversely, as a zealot of modern culture, I am a lover of excess and simultaneity: the ethereal sensation created by innumerable fragments into a harmonious totality. In my work, I attempt to reconcile these issues: these contrasting languages absorbed through both routine cultural saturation and academic exploration. In this body of work, there are several issues that have come to the forefront: imagery (consuming and desiring), materials (choice and construction), and process (making and interactivity).
In this body of works, I have combined pieces with readable imagery, obscured imagery and obliterated imagery. All of the constructions originated from definite images, however some have progressed beyond accessibility. In this, I intend to raise a dialogue concerning presence and absence. When an image moves beyond readability, what becomes the focus? Is the viewer still concerned with finding a trace of the image in its parts? Does the presence of readable imagery corrupt the viewing of abstraction, or emphasize the effect? Often in traditional photography, the image is the vehicle for texture, instead of the material itself. A champion of "pure" photography, Edward Weston (1886-1958) believed that for photography to be a valid art, classic technique must be all-important, and it must stand on its own as a medium, based on its own "limitations and possibilities" (Mora, 14). In Weston's photograph Artichoke, Halved (1930) he portrays the delicate interior of an artichoke: a multiplicity of smooth, wafer-thin leaves, which imperceptibly merge. This photograph shows the beauty (and sensuality) of what may be an unnoticed texture, not immediately identifiable by the viewer without the title. In this piece, Weston communicates a rich organic texture while maintaining the smooth and flawless surface of the photographic paper. Attention is not drawn to the paper itself, but instead pulls us directly into the image.
In my work, I intend for the absence or obscuring of imagery to intensify the visceral quality of the materials in the textures, shapes and spaces they create. I feel the piece Nude #1 best exemplifies this idea. In this piece, the same image has been printed many times, and dissected into thousands of small squares. Unlike other pieces where the image is more faithfully reconstructed, the fragments in this work are seemingly random mass, and (like Weston's photograph) the original imagery may be unknown without the title. Reconstructing the entire photograph is impossible, only fragments of the original scene appear, and even those are difficult to find. The viewer is left with a looming aggregate of fragments, which draw attention not to the imagery they may contain, but their own physicality and combined texture.
Conversely, the absence of imagery highlights the presence of other images. The distinguishable images seem to carry a new weight when juxtaposed. What are these images then, that carry such importance that they cannot dissolve into abstraction? In this group of works, the images are primarily human figures. They are anonymous bodies without faces, and somewhat androgynous in the denial of visual markers of sex. They are without identity other than being a body. Despite this, or perhaps because of this, the viewer is intent on reconstructing the figure, piecing the image together. The painter Jean-Michel Basquiat (1961-1988) once said "I cross out words so you will see them more; the fact that they are obscured makes you want to read them" (Fineberg 451). There is something about the presented image of the nude: it seems to create a gestalt-like compulsion to reconstruct what little is unseen. Perhaps the viewer desires to own the body by knowing the identity, the gender, and the context. In my pieces, none of these things are completely identifiable. In this way, my construction/control of the body mirrors the physical construction of the work, in the obscuring of information.
In constructing these works the materials come, quite literally, to the forefront. All of the works are formed of transparent photographic enlarging film, and pins or wire. Additionally, the pieces have a common geometric language of 90-degree angles throughout. The format should not be seen as a mere device for communicating the imagery, but as an integral aspect of the piece. Very apparent in the work is the puncturing and fragmenting of the photographic material. I relate this deconstructing act in part as a comment on the history of photography. Despite the interventions as early as the European experimental Modernists of the 1920s and 30s, the medium of photography often connotes a sense of documentary vision, of a truthful and accurate representation of an event or image. The imagery I utilize is certainly not this. The images I am presenting are results of orchestrated photo shoots, darkroom manipulation, and physical divisions and extensions. The artists Mike and Doug Starn (b. 1961) likewise critique the conventions of photography in their work. There is a definite insistence to view photography as objects likened to painting or sculpture, not as an unbiased mirror of the world. The Starn twins very purposefully utilize photographs as no more than paper that just happens to contain imagery (Grundenberg 21). The surface, the physical medium, is what becomes important; the paper becomes more than just a servant or vehicle for imagery, but a type of imagery itself. In their piece Horses, the Starn twins use a single negative to print a grid of 21 separate pictures, which depict the heads of two horses. Despite the use of a single image, each photograph receives a different treatment of toning, tearing, taping, exposing, repeating, inverting and anything else you are not "supposed" to do to a photograph. In the end, each photograph is different from the last, and the Starns create a piece that is no longer about the image, but how the image is presented: the materiality of its surface.
In my own works, the imagery is simultaneously seen and seen through, with a specter of the image witnessed behind. This trait of the work again heightens the physicality and separation of the materials, creating a shallow but compulsory 3-dimensional space. Additionally, the precariousness of these pinned or delicately wired fragments alludes to the fabricated nature of the piece and its elusive existence, which is enhanced by the transparency of the film itself. The delicacy of this aesthetic greatly appeals to me; the almost flimsy assemblage is contrasted with the sleek film, and metal supports. That is, I intend the materials and grid format to evoke images of modernity, skyscrapers of glass and metal. The skyscraper to me is a hallmark of modernity, it symbolizes our ever-expanding culture. Additionally, they seem an archetype of the geometric architecture that surrounds us: a resolutely inorganic grid form. My pieces, however shiny or new they may seem, are not to endure the proverbial "long-run." The material is only temporarily suspended in the air, in contrast to the idea art (or modernity) is timeless.
I utilize pins dually, first as a method to individualize each fragment, illustrating the individual necessity of each to have a physical support, heightening their sense of separation. Conversely, the pins establish a constant language that connects the fragments as numerous parts of a greater whole. The wire quilting works similarly, the links connect the segments while in their very existence illustrate the separations. Despite this similarity in functions, the quilted pieces and the pinned pieces also operate differently both in their mode of construction and mood. In the quilted piece, Fetal Nude the imagery is broken up into many squares, and bound physically together by the wire rings. In the pinned piece Torso of Youth, which also depicts an androgynous nude, the imagery is broken up into squares and supported by pins, but what connects the squares is their proximity and grid format, not a physical connection. Subsequently, Torso of Youth reads as a more aggressive act of deconstruction, where Fetal Nude functions as a reconstruction.
Sol LeWitt, a groundbreaking Conceptual artist, wrote, "when an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are make beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes the machine that makes the art" (Legg 9). LeWitt also recognized that while the underlying logic in a work may be a simple scheme, the object itself is experientially unpredictable. This process in between idea and object interests me. Through this series of works, I have become very concerned with the idea of process in my art. The work itself is a product of a series of ritualized processes; photographing imagery, choosing imagery, enlarging the photograph, dissecting the photograph, puncturing each individual component, and finally reconstructing the pieces into a new (similar or dissimilar) whole. I am engaged throughout this making process in alternate modes of constructing/ deconstructing/ reconstructing, all while maintaining some goal of a final object that expresses my idea. The goals and rituals within the process vary in scope, from puncturing a single square of film with a pin to hanging the finished work on the wall. A typically American notion of labor equating to self-worth (or in a more existential sense, you are only what you do), intimately ties me to the materials, images, textures and actions involved in all parts of the art-making process. In this obsessive process, I must question whether the piece is the final goal or if it is actually the act of making that is significant, like many artists associated with "process art" in the 1960s and 1970s, who were focused on procedures interacting with materials and ideas.
Robert Morris (b. 1931) was an artist concerned with such investigations of process and materials, extending Marcel Duchamp's assertion of the dominance of the idea in art. In 1961 he made a piece called Box With the Sound of Its Own Making, enclosing a looped recording of himself constructing the very box. This work makes the art, very literally, the proof of the process. Morris' idea of taking a given form and seeing how many different ways he could dispose it into space was the idea behind his 1965 work Untitled ("L" beams). The piece consists of three L-shaped, white beams (8' long, 2' deep) that were arranged variously around the gallery, one laying on its side, one projecting an arm upwards, and one balanced on two points. The three identical structures seem very different comparatively, despite their extremely simple shape and limited variability. Morris plays on perception, and the perceptive interactivity art possesses long after the artist "finishes" it. Other works of Morris' involved cutting up a form and reassembling it differently to see what happened to its gestalt, its identifying mental image (Fineberg 304). In his felt works of the later 1960s, he remained consistent with a singular material, and rectangular shaped pieces, but so varied in their applied forms that no two pieces looked the same. This idea greatly influences my work, and points to the second part of the process of an artwork.
After an artist completes a piece, some would believe that the piece is unalterable, nothing changes what the artist has done. Minimalist and Process artists were exactly against this thinking; instead, the greatest action upon the art is the interaction between it and the viewer. In this body of work, I am very interested on how my process interacts with the viewer's process. Despite what may seem to be a personally isolated ritual of process, the viewer is integral to these works. The process is not complete without the interaction of the viewer. While my process is to construct/deconstruct/reconstruct, the viewer is moved to reconstruct what I have undone. However, the viewer will never arrive at the authentic, original imagery; it can only be seen through the lenses I have manufactured. This idea was put forth with Cubism, the first time that the viewer was not given the whole, but only a conglomeration of its parts. This tendency to reconstruct, to identify and understand makes the viewer more aware of the physical construction of the work, as well as their own primary interaction.
This dialogue between viewer-art-artist is very significant for my work, and in this there is an implicit theme of consuming images. I am fascinated with the visual languages we have learned in our hyper-visual culture, and how it has taught us how to read and consume images. I wish to play with this concept through the revealing/concealing counteractions within my work. The images that I use may be fragmented, obscured, or obliterated but they are always constructed. The images that emerge are physically constructed within the process of assembling the piece, which intimately ties for me the image to the process. The images are not only constructed in the physical sense, but also the image behind the material is constructed during the photo shoot, and in the choice of how and which images are finally printed.
In the presentation of these bodies, I intend to partly reference the language of advertising, where no matter what the product, it is often a figure (which is usually sexualized) that is used as the major signifier of the message. If one flips through any contemporary fashion magazine, the images are more often than not scantily clad women. The ways these bodies are presented are in such a way where sexuality is not entirely overt; a hint of sex is more titillating than explicit "indecency." In my pieces, the bodies are cropped or positioned so that sexuality is just barely concealed. I also feel the anonymity of the figures in my work echoes the idealization of these figures in advertising; only one type of body is acceptable for mass media and only the body is important. From the other end of Western history, another source for my portrayal of figures is the "classical" ideal, i.e. Greek figural sculpture. In these icons of figural form, the body is posed and poised; a static and idealized model meant to be looked at. In my pieces, the figures often echo this language of posing, some even directly reference particular sculptures. Both the references to Greek sculptures and advertising are forms of body idealization, where the identity is irrelevant; the body is the subject. With these ideals, the ambiguity of the scenes is furthered to include an ambiguity of gender, space and time.
Through rituals of these varying processes, the dialogue of materials, and the obscuring of imagery, I hope to make art that is not only one thing. The works can and will be read differently, by different individuals who may take away from the work one idea, many ideas, or none. My most fundamental intention is for the viewer to stop, look, and interact, with yet another contribution to the visual tome of our culture. As Robert Rosenblum wrote of Sol LeWitt's work, "the perceptual whole is far more than the sum of its conceptual parts" (Legg 16).
Bibliography of cited sources.
Fineberg, Jonathan
Art Since 1940: Strategies of Being
Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 1999
Grundberg, Andy
Mike and Doug Starn
Harry N. Abrams, Inc. New York. 1990
Legg, Alicia, Lucy R. Lippard,
Bernice Rose, Robert Rosenblum
Sol LeWitt
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. 1978
Mora, Gilley
Edward Weston: Forms of Passion
Harry N. Abrams, Inc. New York. 1995
Tucker, Marcia
Robert Morris
Whitney Museum of Art, New York. 1970.