Here is some very, disjointed other shit I've been doing. Maybe it all fits together, maybe it's best to keep things separate. Little kids, could fit with the murders, maybe? Probably not.
I haven't read all the comments about your work yet, so forgive me if I repeat things...
I've been thinking about these works (both the serial killers and the drawings above) for over a week. So they've really stuck in my head. That has to be a good thing, right?
I'm really interested in the serial killer series, I think you can push it further. I am very conscious of the photographic roots of the serial killer images. They seem very "photographic" aesthetically in how they are framed, seen and especially how the subjects engage the viewer, looking right back at the "camera" in the bottom two. I would have no idea the kids in them are serial killers without more information. One way you could deal with this would be to draw a caption or draw some of an accompanying article around the sides if they are originally clipped from a newspaper source. It could be really interesting to play with how much text around the sides you give the viewer to figure out that the child pictured is a little sociopathic monster. I like looking at these and thinking they are somewhat mundane and then discovering that they are anything but mundane in actuality.
Are the source images family photographs or images taken by the media? That could make a big difference in how you determine how they are portrayed visually and how you deal with the banality of the photograph on the surface and the horror they conceptually contain.
I'd wonder if you'd be willing to draw any stills from TV shots. A ton of serial killer imagery comes to us via TV as well and I imagine it would be an interesting challenge to draw the squiggling lines of a TV still...which bring me to a visual point that is missing from these: any representation of photographic blur or depth of field. I guess depth-of-field is represented mainly by flat planes of color? Is there a more interesting way to do this? I cannot look at your serial killer series without thinking of Richter's Baader-Meinhof series which I'm sure you know of, but on the off chance you haven't seen it:
Perhaps there is some joining of your contour lines and photographic blur still to come in your work? It seems like the latest piece is going in this direction, but I think it could be pushed much, much further.
Also, I'd love to see some crazy merging of something like the dagger-uterus piece you did a couple years back and one of these, since one of the original inspiration was anxiety about potentially giving birth to a sociopath (which would never happen, by the way, you'd be too good a mother). Making the work more personal is another way to proceed, of course.
Tammy,
ReplyDeleteI haven't read all the comments about your work yet, so forgive me if I repeat things...
I've been thinking about these works (both the serial killers and the drawings above) for over a week. So they've really stuck in my head. That has to be a good thing, right?
I'm really interested in the serial killer series, I think you can push it further. I am very conscious of the photographic roots of the serial killer images. They seem very "photographic" aesthetically in how they are framed, seen and especially how the subjects engage the viewer, looking right back at the "camera" in the bottom two. I would have no idea the kids in them are serial killers without more information. One way you could deal with this would be to draw a caption or draw some of an accompanying article around the sides if they are originally clipped from a newspaper source. It could be really interesting to play with how much text around the sides you give the viewer to figure out that the child pictured is a little sociopathic monster. I like looking at these and thinking they are somewhat mundane and then discovering that they are anything but mundane in actuality.
Are the source images family photographs or images taken by the media? That could make a big difference in how you determine how they are portrayed visually and how you deal with the banality of the photograph on the surface and the horror they conceptually contain.
I'd wonder if you'd be willing to draw any stills from TV shots. A ton of serial killer imagery comes to us via TV as well and I imagine it would be an interesting challenge to draw the squiggling lines of a TV still...which bring me to a visual point that is missing from these: any representation of photographic blur or depth of field. I guess depth-of-field is represented mainly by flat planes of color? Is there a more interesting way to do this? I cannot look at your serial killer series without thinking of Richter's Baader-Meinhof series which I'm sure you know of, but on the off chance you haven't seen it:
http://www.gerhard-richter.com/art/paintings/photo_paintings/category.php?catID=56
Perhaps there is some joining of your contour lines and photographic blur still to come in your work? It seems like the latest piece is going in this direction, but I think it could be pushed much, much further.
Also, I'd love to see some crazy merging of something like the dagger-uterus piece you did a couple years back and one of these, since one of the original inspiration was anxiety about potentially giving birth to a sociopath (which would never happen, by the way, you'd be too good a mother). Making the work more personal is another way to proceed, of course.
Exciting work!!!
Sorry, I should have referred to them as child murderers, not serial killers...but that doesn't change my comments.
ReplyDelete