Painting
and photography exist in an equation, which allows me to think of both through
the other, and it is perhaps the image that sits in the middle of the terms. An
image is one instance of how I think of the visual, as neither natural vision
nor a photograph. The contrast between the experience of seeing and the
photograph (looking at a room and looking at a photo of the room) makes me
realise a gap — something absent from the photo, also unnoticeable while just
looking. So it is the photograph that reveals what is missing — the limits of
seeing naturally — and starts the process of trying to make something — an image
(artifact) that will restitute or capture this thing that I don’t otherwise
see. Like a blinding flash or a light in your eyes.
Many others worked on this gap. Bonnard, who refused the immediate world, created a fluid space for looking: varied intensive fragments and peripheral details allow you to slowly construct a view of a window, room and figure as your eyes move around the painting. Then Morandi, who plays with recognition: a background and foreground that invert and allow things to emerge and dissolve in a circular, repetitive manner, creating an image of a presence that dissipates as it appears. And Katz, who works on an image of fleeting-ness itself, that is able to make you linger on what is too fast for your eyes to perceive and usually lost in a still photograph—like the image of a flowing river.
Many others worked on this gap. Bonnard, who refused the immediate world, created a fluid space for looking: varied intensive fragments and peripheral details allow you to slowly construct a view of a window, room and figure as your eyes move around the painting. Then Morandi, who plays with recognition: a background and foreground that invert and allow things to emerge and dissolve in a circular, repetitive manner, creating an image of a presence that dissipates as it appears. And Katz, who works on an image of fleeting-ness itself, that is able to make you linger on what is too fast for your eyes to perceive and usually lost in a still photograph—like the image of a flowing river.
