whitespace
May 8 – June 6, 2020
My third solo exhibition at whitespace was supposed to open on May 1, 2020 but due to COVID-19 it has been postponed until 2021. Like many other artists I have maintained my practice through the quarantine and isolation period. In April I started working on a series of collaborative screen portraits. Engaging the community virtually, I have asked artists and friends to sit for a portrait via zoom. The result is an ongoing Claude Mirror (please link here to the Claude Mirror site), series presented on whitespace virtual platform together with Carolyn Henne and Judy Rushin’s I’m Never Coming Home https://commabox.art/ project.
The digital screen acts much like the Claude Mirror, an 18th century invention with the slightly convex surface of the mirror, which widens the background view while allowing foreground to come into focus. The digital device held by the model acts like a mirror, framing the model and the scene. In a make-shift studio, the author’s camera frames another screen. The camera is connected to a laptop with an image capture software, which then takes a shot. The exposure happens through the mediation of multiple cameras and digital screens. The physical distance is diminished by the act of communication. The outcomes are portraits, stretched both by the very genre of portrait and the digital bandwidth which enables them. In the times of ever-increasing digital communication, the physical attributes of images are considered in terms of digital pixels, their surfaces flattened even further. Digital image testifies about the digital distance, compressed within a new mode of perception.