Frames

2000

These images continue and develop many of the emotional and psychological issues raised in my earlier works (Marks, bodyscans, Hours)having to do with our bodies -- our physical fragility, the passage of time, its effects on our bodies, our mortality, and – living within us the same time as all of the above – our vitality, our energy and power and promise. Images of gray whiskers, of young children, of frogs, of fetuses.

At the same time, the images attempt to redefine pictorial space in a way that reflects the modalities of our electronic age. Much of our imagery is no longer contained within geometrically bounded frames, as it had been for centuries and across many cultures (the rectangular windows of painting, of cinema, of video; circular tondos and rose windows).

Our imagery tumbles over itself and beyond its frames. Images float about on our computer screens. (The rectangle of the monitor is itself ignored by our eyes.) The image we see frequently consists of many images, some contained within their own frames/windows, some spilling out over frames, some ignoring frames entirely and wandering about the new, fluid pictorial space. The imagery, and we with it, are no longer clearly bounded, no longer unary. It is, we are, multiplexed.

Another aspect of pictorial space is sign-making. How do we define and interpret the signs and symbols that compose our imagery? Is an abstract mark more or less symbolic than a photograph? Is a photograph more representational than an icon? Or are they all equally representational/non-representational, equally iconic, and equally abstract?

As part of this same question, why do the images from other cultures and other times make sense to us? Their inclusion here underscores their connection to contemporary imagery, but at the same time questions that relationship. The explosion in electronic communication assures that we can no longer draw from only one pictorial tradition. Our imagery, across the planet and across time, is shared. The styles intermingle. The vocabularies, the icons, the meanings intermix.