The following ten images are flatbed scans of the mixed media works posted in December: Petra Nimm. In the process of scanning each image has been cropped to highlight the mid-section of the image, measuring approximately 8 inches x 10 inches/20 cm x 25 cm, although the original work extends to the edges of the page (10 inches x 14 inches/ 25.40 cm x 35.56 cm). The images in the previous post, also cropped slightly, were photographed in daylight and the color was adjusted slightly in Photoshop (cooler). The purpose of scanning the same images was to detect the differences in what was digitally captured by the fixed and 100% artificial light of the scanner camera and how this appears on a screen compared to the images made with the human operated DSLR camera, daylight, and editing software.
Important to note is my work with two linked monitors - the screen of my five year old 13 inch MacBook Air and an older, free standing 19 inch ASUS monitor. In the year I have worked with this set up the differences in color, brightness, and clarity of the two monitor (despite adjustments) has been obvious to me however, as my eyes move back and forth between the two screens my brain adjusts to what it is I am seeing so that the differences become less obvious the longer I look at the image I’m dragging from one side of my expanded digital desktop to the other. During the process of scanning these ten pieces I became more aware of the differences in the images from one screen to the next. In part I believe this is due to the subtle nature of the work, the not quite monochrome whiteness, and the way the scanner has captured the different surfaces and textures of the paintings compared to the DSLR camera.
Whenever I post images of work to this or my other website I try to view the images on as many different screens as I have access to in order to check the range of variation in appearance. Each screen projects a slightly different image just like each of us physically sees the world differently due to variations in anatomy (not to mention how the information captured by the eye might be processed by the brain) and while this might seem obvious enough it is something that tends to not be considered as much as it probably should - just like I eventually stop noticing the differences between my two monitors and simply make the ‘adjustment’ to my seeing inside my brain. However, I believe it is important for us as viewers, as well as, in this instance, myself as the maker, to keep this important fact in front of our eyes (so to speak) at all times. Lest we forget what we are seeing might not be all there is to see of what we are looking at in this digital realm. This awareness makes it more difficult to brush aside the differences and, importantly, to begin confusing the image for the object it represents or, maybe better said, replicates on the screen when we can see for ourselves the change in appearance of the image from a projector to our laptop to our tablet to our phone.
With each change of our viewing context the work we are looking at changes, even if the changes are quite subtle. I argue, the singularity of each viewing experience transforms the image (the replication of the object or the copy of previous replications) making it unique - a copy that becomes an original.
Beginning when I first began to photograph my paintings as part of a documentary process - making prints on various papers and Ektachrome slides for the purpose of applications, dissemination and archiving - and always being disappointed by how of the work much was ‘lost’ in the process. Changing equipment, techniques, employing professionals, transitioning from the analog to the digital world I have tried and failed to capture that which I found to be the essence of the painting I was trying to document. When I thought I had come close to getting that which I sought on film I would then turn around and do something (foolish) like change my painting process - materials, techniques, location, you name it and I’ve changed it even if what I ‘paint’ has not changed. In turn this always skewers the result of the documentation process. What I once came close to capturing is further away than before. Until, one day I finally realized I’ll never be able to document, to archive, to capture that essence of the painting I could see when I look at it because I am trying to translate from the language of painting to another language (photography, film)!
Accepting this ‘untranslatable’ quality for myself as a painter has been a nearly thirty year process and I am not always sure I always accept it, still. This is likely due to my continued presence in a position of needing to document, to disseminate, to archive the paintings I am making. My need fuels my want, and my want is my desire to capture the essence of painting that can only be expressed in the language of painting itself. As a non-monolingual who has lived between two languages almost as long as I have painted, who has translated both spoken and written words in formal and informal situations, it is clear to me that between two languages there is always a gap that one must bridge in the translation in order for the meaning to cross between the two. This does not mean that what is said on one side of the gap will emerge in a state of wholeness on the other side of the bridge. What has been said my not be translatable between the two languages, Instead, what may arrive is a fragment of what has departed. Yet, however small (and even opaque it might seem) the fragment can contain the essence of what was said on the other side of the gap. When this happens even the untranslatable can be understood.
When I sat down to write this I did not anticipate writing the above - I realize much of the vocabulary in that last analogy comes from a talk I attended yesterday evening at MIT by David Joselit, primarily on the work of American sculptor Rachel Harrison, titled Untranslatable: Conceptual Art Since the 1990s. Joselit’s thesis circulated around the notions that the ideas of conceptual art need not (and since the 1990s no longer) be expressed (communicated) via text and documentation but can come directly from traditional means of making - painting, sculpture, and performance (which has fallen for Joselit into the realm of the ‘traditional’). Joselit stated that abstraction is essentially ‘untranslatable’ (and vice versa) in that it occurs in the present tense and is impossible to capture. Knowledge, in this case the ideas of conceptual art, is not always transparent, knowledge can be opaque. Important is that agency is placed in the hands of the receiver (spectator) by the artist. Artist, work, and viewer have the right to remain opaque - untranslatable. - a right to ‘radical otherness’ without having to sacrifice a relationship to all else. Opacity - the untranslatable - merely requires a slowing down of observation (and making). This runs counter to the speeding up of the instant translatable, digitized culture we are accustomed to today; but, as Joselit pointed out, there is the other, older, slower, untranslatable ‘digital culture’ we have known forever … the culture made by the five digits contained on each human hand. This is the digital culture he is speaking about and to as a means to broaden the scope by which the conceptual is remediated (a word whose use was challenged in the post-talk discussion with Caroline Jones and Judith Barry). I had intended to write about this talk and the ideas expressed by Joselit, and probably will write more later, because I was intrigued by the notion of the untranslatable and abstraction and the need for opacity as a mechanism for slowing down the remediation of the idea; but it seems my hands and the scanning process this morning in the studio drove my head here quicker than I anticipated. This might be a good example of the intermingling of thought and process that happens between the making and the writing in the studio.
But, as usual, I’ve digressed.
So, back to the topic of this post and to quickly conclude with how the fragment of the essence of painting I seek to capture is the mutability of work which occurs not just across each context it is viewed in but the process of a single viewing. In most galleries and museums the conditions under which a painting is viewed are highly controlled, regimented. In the studio, in a private home, this is less the case. In the process of making the painting in my studio the light and conditions under which I am working change as I work and, in turn, I work with the changes as they occur. When a painting is displayed in my living space - something I do for the same reason I look at images I post online on as many screens as possible - I like to observe how the work changes over time by the changing of the conditions of light it is viewed in. Even if I stuck a video camera on a painting for 24 hours a day for 365 days a year I still would not be able to capture the essence of the painting that I would capture if I sat a few minutes now and then, or just glanced at the work for a swift second as I walk by it. And still this is something that I still try to seek and include somehow in that little but of what I am offering the spectator (of the image) when I post or submit online, or print out onto a piece of paper.
In Joselit’s talk he gave an example of how the untranslatable might still be communicated to the recipient (viewer/spectator) in early conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner’s Declaration of Intent. Key being, for artists working with ‘traditional’ means and media the work should through itself and not thru extraneous text or documentation declare to the receiver the intent. But here, as this is a text with documentary images, I shall take Weiner’s approach and describe with words the steps you, the viewer, might take to view the following images in a way that might further the agency you have of receiving the essence of painting through whatever screen you are viewing them on.
Open a single image in lightbox.
Look at the image on the screen from a straight on position.
Look away. Then beginning with your focus to the left of the screen slowly move your eyes to the right side of the screen at different angles to the screen as you glance across the image. Repeat, beginning from the right moving to the left, from the bottom to the top, and from the top to the bottom. In other words, look at the screen as if you were looking at, walking around a painting, displayed on a wall.
How does your movement, the speed you move your eyes, your head, impact how the image on the screen is received? Do you see things at one angle that do not appear at another? How does changing the screen you are viewing this on impact what you are seeing? Have you tried looking at this in a darkened room?