Press Release
Sam Falls
September 13 / November 3, 2012
My work is engaged with expanding the dialogue of photography with the other arts, namely painting and sculpture. In doing so the goal has been to drop the specific material and technical qualities of photography which tend to isolate the viewer and favor the more theoretical elements essential to the medium, namely representation and time. By using alternative materials more directly associated with the traditional art forms of painting and sculpture while employing photographic processes, I hope I’ve been able to bridge the gap between photography, painting, and sculpture in a progressive dialogue that synthesises the mediums in a harmonious way rather than arguing photography’s validity as a separate but equal art.
Here I’ll be exhibiting three different kinds of works all sharing the same subject matter. The decision to use building blocks relies on my interest in the developmental language of contemporary art, namely minimalism and modernism. These historic works were shaped by abstraction and geometry, so for each project my goal is to choose subject matter that is at once relative to past movements in its aesthetic quality, while also serving well now as an inalienable example of representation and commonality.
The first element of the show are photographic prints on paper which are then painted on using the actual subjects in the image. I photographed basic building blocks (cinder blocks, bricks, clay blocks, etc.) against different colored backdrops on a 4x5 film camera and then scanned the film into the computer. In photoshop I used the paintbrush tool to select colors
from the backdrop and apply digital brushstrokes with a color that is derived digitally from one of the millions of pixels composing the solid color of the photographed backdrop. I select a different pixel at random several times to get a composition of varied colors from the otherwise uniform backdrop and digitally paint on the picture to exemplify inherent colors otherwise hidden by the homogeneity of the whole. The image is printed and in the studio I take the same blocks that were in the photograph and apply acrylic paint with a pumice medium (to match the texture of the blocks) to the surface of the blocks and then use the block as a traditional printing tool on the photograph. I use various sides of the blocks and various colors matching those which have been selected from the imaged and painted ondigitally, so technically there is the original real life color, then inherent colors made apparent in the
computer, and then finally a physical manifestation of these colors on the print itself. In a way
you end up with an even more real, or hyper-real understanding of the colors in the image.
Furthermore, the final object holds two very different but equally valid representations of the subject (the relative blocks). One is the heralded photograph which we believe these days to be the most accurate represenation of reality, pitted against the life-size paint rendering from the block itself which mimics not only the shape of the object but the physical quality. To get to the image of the subject you first have to look through the surface of it as its been applied by the surface of the subject itself. This breaks down the photograph in a couple ways – first you loose the problem of alienation for the viewer, that is the fact that normally we see a photograph and believe it is something ‘that has been’ in the past which we can only access through the image, but there is only the creator or artist who witnessed its reality at one instant. Here the photographic object has seen several periods of production, the studio set-up, the photograph on film, the computer composition, and the physical painting. So now the viewer fits into a timeline of production where they have a much more familiar relationship to the object and the artist over time, where obviously also their viewing has been considered. I think of this as a much more inviting and friendly way to see a photograph – as one would see a painting – with the hand of the artist revealed not only in composition but material quality – which is usually absent in photography.
So it addresses the problem of time, and the problem of representation is addressed by the block print – which quite literally references the printing process which proceeded photography as representation for the masses, but I think it also questions after coming all this way, is it really that much better?
Sam Falls
The second body of work for the show consists of rubbings using many colored pencils to transfer the image of the blocks to paper. The transfer mimics and merges many aspects of the painted photographic prints in the sense that both the actual printing process and actual size of the blocks is combined into one representation. It is elementarily simple, however it gets to the heart of imaging an object while requiring development through a prolonged process. The intimacy of the piece becomes apparent as the colors mix and ultimately the works acquire not only the image of the subject, but the image of time and the artist’s hand.
The last works are sculptures made from the blocks themselves. The color added to the center of each block allows one to pay attention to the light passing through as the sun moves around the sculpture and reveals the color from the shadow. These sculptures’ placement in the show is intended not as a didactic explanatory note, but rather another challenge to the inherent virtues of color and their revelatory capacity, as well as the physical structure of the blocks in three dimensions, a sense of their weight, and ultimately the function they serve which is what actually has come to dictate their shape and hence build the show.
Sam Falls for Marta Cervera’s Gallery and actual size of the blocks is combined into one representation.
It is elementarily simple, however it gets to the heart of imaging an object while requiring development through a prolonged process. The intimacy of the piece becomes apparent as the colors mix and ultimately the works acquire not only the image of the subject, but the image of time and the artist’s hand.
The last works are sculptures made from the blocks themselves. The color added to the center of each block allows one to pay attention to the light passing through as the sun moves around the sculpture and reveals the color from the shadow. These sculptures’ placement in the show is intended not as a didactic explanatory note, but rather another challenge to the inherent virtues of color and their revelatory capacity, as well as the physical structure of the blocks in three dimensions, a sense of their weight, and ultimately the function they serve which is what actually has come to dictate their shape and hence build the show.
Sam Falls for Marta Cervera’s Gallery
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Sam Falls extiende el lenguaje de la fotografía a otras artes, como son la pintura y la escultura. Su intención es la de abandonar el material específico y las cualidades técnicas de la fotografía, que tiende a aislar al espectador, y apuesta por elementos teóricos relativos al medio de la foto como son la representación y el tiempo. Al utilizar materiales alternativos vinculados a la pintura y escultura a través de un proceso fotográfico, Falls pretende relacionar las tres artes en un diálogo progresivo que el artista construye con elaborados procesos hasta que obtiene el trabajo final que ven nuestros ojos.
La exposición en la galería Marta Cervera, recoge fotografías, pinturas y esculturas en torno a un único tema, que es el de la vinculación de los tres medios artísticos.
En sus fotografías, Falls desvanece las cualidades técnicas de la fotografía, que tienden a aislar al espectador y favorece elementos teóricos relativos a este medio, poniendo en duda una de las cualidades por siempre atribuidas a la fotografía, que es la veracidad de lo que representa. El artista, fotografía bloques de construcción (de cemento, arcilla, ladrillos, etc.) frente a telones de diferentes colores con una cámara de 4x5, y posteriormente escanea la película en el ordenador. En photoshop utiliza la herramienta pincel para seleccionar colores del fondo que aplicará después pinceladas digitales con un color que deriva de los colores seleccionados. La imagen es impresa y llevada al estudio donde el artista coge los mismos bloques de la imagen y aplica sobre ellos una capa de pintura acrílica con un material esponjoso sobre la superficie de los mismos, para luego usarlos como una herramienta de impresión sobre la fotografía. El resultado supone dos representaciones muy diferentes pero igualmente válidas del mismo objeto.
Por un lado está la fotografía, que hoy en día se entiende como el medio más fiel a la realidad, y por otro, tenemos la pintura de tamaño natural del propio bloque, que imita no sólo la forma si no la cualidad física del mismo. Para llegar a la imagen del sujeto primero se tiene que mirar a través de la huella de la misma, ya que ha sido aplicada por la superficie del propio sujeto. A través de este laborioso proceso, Falls rompe con la alienación del espectador que produce la fotografía, de manera que, cuando vemos una fotografía, creemos que es algo "que ha sido" en el pasado y que sólo podemos acceder a través de la imagen, pero no es más que el creador o el artista el que fue testigo de su realidad en un instante.
El objeto fotográfico ha sido víctima de varias fases de producción: la construcción de una escena artificial, la fotografía en película, la composición digital , y la pintura física, por lo que ahora el espectador se inscribe en una línea de tiempo de producción en el que tienen una relación mucho más familiar conel objeto y con el artista en el tiempo, donde, obviamente, también se ha considerado su visualización. La mano del artista se revela no sólo en la composición, sino en la calidad del material, que suele estar ausente en la fotografía. Por lo tanto, dirigida por la impresión de bloque - que literalmente hace referencia al proceso de impresión que precedió a la fotografía como representación para las masas, cabría preguntarse, ¿Es esto mucho mejor?
El segundo cuerpo de trabajo para la exposición consiste en frottages con diferentes lápices de colores para transferir la imagen de los bloques al papel. La transferencia imita y fusiona muchos aspectos de las impresiones fotográficas pintadas, de manera que en ambos, el proceso de impresión real y el tamaño real de los bloques, se combinan en una sola representación. Parece simple, pero conseguimos llegar a la esencia del objeto a través de un proceso prologado. Finalmente, las obras adquieren no sólo la imagen del sujeto, sino la imagen del tiempo a través de la mano del artista.
El último elemento de la exposición se compone de esculturas hechas con los mismos bloques. El color es añadido en el centro de cada bloque, lo que oliga a prestar atención a la luz que pasa a través de ellos. Estas esculturas colocadas en la exposición tienen por objeto no el ser una nota explicativa didáctica, sino más bien otro desafío a las virtudes intrínsecas del color y su capacidad de revelación, así como la estructura física de los bloques en tres dimensiones, el sentido de su peso, y en última instancia, la función que desempeñan, que es lo que en realidad ha venido a dictar su forma y por lo tanto, construyen el espectáculo.
En definitiva, presenciamos un discurso sobre el medio en si mismo, ars gratia artis.