As I walked through the Arsenale I was very aware of walls that were hundreds of years old, these were walls that had 'history' and some works sat better than others against that background. Certain artists had invested time and energy into their images' surface construction, and these works had a textural intensity that allowed them to hold their own against the patina of the old Arsenale walls. A good example of this was the work of Felipe Baeza. Baeza is a Mexican artist that uses cut out and manipulated papers to build his images. He makes incisions, scrapes surfaces down, sands back through layers and dyes areas using what look like batik techniques, to create variegated textures and develop intense differentiated surfaces.
Felipe Baeza: Surface detail of 'Imaginary self portrait'
In his images bodies are transformed, sometimes becoming half-human and half-plant, as in “Emerging in difference” where the lower limbs have turned into thorny branches, or “Por caminos ignorandos” where a network of branches emerges from the head and invades the rectangle's pictorial space, finally reaching down to the mouths of two half buried men.
“Emerging in difference”
Detail
Detail of a surface and the edge of the paper 'floating' within the frame
Each surface has its own intense presence. The spikes of the thorns are cut out and I presume glued onto a brown suede like surface, this is itself cut out and set into a subtlety textured grey background that looks as if it had been created by some sort of paint resist process; the man's body was constructed by sections of much lighter paper, this also had a very particular surface quality and each section was carefully fitted, so that the edges between became precise lines that carried the message, 'I am exactly where I have to be'. This precision also operates to make the image believable and to give the work authenticity. If you want an image to be convincing, especially if it is something of a mythic or fantasy nature, it is a good idea to include something that grounds it in reality, and in Baeza's case he uses his surfaces to do this.
It is also interesting to see how the paper he is working on comes to an edge and how this is presented in the frame. By 'floating' the work he is able to stress the objectness of the paper he works on and its physicality, issues that directly confront the work's fantasy nature.
Imaginary self-portrait
“Por caminos ignorandos”
Paper edge. Look at how paper has been treated to achieve textural intensity
Detail: “Por caminos ignorandos”
Felipe Baeza: Wayward
Sometimes it is the way things are presented that draws me to them. Violeta Parra, a musician, back in the 1960s began making 'songs that paint themselves' as a natural extension of her music. Like Baeza her cut out and stitched, knitted and macrame forms give textural weight to her images
Violeta Parra: details
Violeta Parra: Installation of framed works
However it was the way that the curators had installed Parra's work that drew me in. Those of you that follow this blog will be very aware that I'm fascinated by presentation techniques and how they affect the way a work is read. By having the images presented at an angle and at the low height that they were, it changed the viewer's relationship in a variety of ways. First of all it suggested the relationship a maker often has with the thing made. For instance textile frames such as those for weaving are often set up like this to allow the maker to work in such a way that their hand can access all areas of the piece being made, or drawing boards might be set up in this way. So in some ways the relationship between spectator and work was made to be very physical. However these works were still behind glass and framed, so that the distancing this creates was still in effect. These 'plinths' however also suggested a more sculptural understanding of the work and as such this 'elevated' the material aspects of the images, making me more aware of their physical nature as cut out pieces of worked on fabric. Like Baeza she was making imagery that was unreal and of a private fantasy nature, and I was being made to look at it as a physical reality. She was though first and foremost a musician.
Violeta Parra
The fact that someone could be known for two or more art forms in the 1960s was rare and in some ways Parra was well before her time. Her music still sounds relevant and holds its own against a contemporary soundscape and I would suggest that her images need to be looked at in conjunction with the art-form that they in effect emerged from.
Violeta Parra
I also sensed a shamanic aspect to her imagery, and it reminded me of images I had seen a long time ago made by an Amazon shaman and like Baeza, Parra is south American. The conjunction of music and imagery being central to many spiritual practices, the one aiding the other as the brain is taken on a journey out of reality and into the spirit world.
Ilit Azoulay: Queendom: detail
There was a very different technical approach to textural content in the Israel pavilion. The surfaces of Baeza and Parra rely on the textual reality of fabric and paper to give them gravity but there are other more contemporary ways of developing surface texture and its conceptual read, one of which was used by Ilit Azoulay. Photography is a wonderful tool when it comes to being able to use textural reality. Using the right lens and focal distance you can ensure that almost hallucinogenic detail is captured. In this instance Ilit Azoulay re-appropriated the research work of art historian David Storm Rice. He had made detailed documentary photographs of thousands of pieces of inlaid and embossed metal tableware, objects made and sold in the Middle East, regardless of their ethnic or religious origins. Most of these objects had been found in Western museums which was where Storm Rice photographed them. This fact alone had a lot to say about post-colonial history. Ilit Azoulay scanned Rice's original photographs then enlarged, cut, superimposed and transformed them by photomontage, thus giving the objects a new life and a new story, now setting out these constructed images as if they had emerged from an ancient feminine “Queendom”. This digital female kingdom explains Ilit Azoulay being a response to the poor functioning of patriarchal power structures.
Ilit Azoulay: Queendom
Azoulay relies on the textural similarity of ancient metal objects to enable her to join up the various images coherently, this together with the surface texture of photography itself coheres these images together, but in effect they are still collages and operate within the collage tradition.
There were hundreds of artists to look at in Venice, these few posts being a very small taste of what to expect. If and when you do go, try and look for things that you can use to extend your own work, in this case I was of course thinking about how in making my own images I could attend far more to surface detail, and the material qualities of the images I make.
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