Abstract images of traces...

Image from 'Art and Photography' book

From the youtube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WyHG_26lgE Cadieux says that she 'likes treating the body as a landscape' which is displayed in the images above comparing the bruised part of the body which has aspects like the beautiful sky. 

I was attracted her images because it shows the abstract possibilities that you can do for the subject of traces of traces. She used macroscopic lenses so she can get very close to the subject and allows her to have large-scale images which have landscape abstract feels to them.

I am wanting to do something abstract but it doesn't necessarily need to be large-scale or made with a zoomed lens.. however these made me think about the possibilities of traces and how vast the subject is (which is a good thing).. traces could be something internal or external such as heartbreak, or injury or changing feelings such as excited, sad, happy, surprised. I find that music is influential on my moods and when a song changes it can change my mood leaving the other mood something of the past. 

‘In her enormous colour photographs, Genevieve Cadieux of Montreal provides the most challenging and provocative works in the show. "Le Corps du Ciel" (the skys body) juxtaposes two photographs, one of bruised skin and one of a sky with gathering storm clouds. By bringing together an ugly blemish and a manifestation of natural beauty, Cadieux invites a reordering of thoughts on the beauty of nature and the nature of beauty.’

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1993-11-10/features/1993314170_1_radice-nea-funds-du-ciel


Carolee Schneemann

Carolee Schneemann, multidisciplinary artist. Transformed the definition of art, especially discourse on the body, sexuality, and gender. The history of her work is characterized by research into archaic visual traditions, pleasure wrested from suppressive taboos, the body of the artist in dynamic relationship with the social body.

Up To And Including Her Limits was the direct result of Pollock's physicalized painting process....
I am suspended in a tree surgeon's harness on a three-quarter-inch manila rope, a rope which I can raise or lower manually to sustain an entranced period of drawing– my extended arm holds crayons which stroke the surrounding walls, accumulating a web of colored marks. My entire body becomes the agency of visual traces, vestige of the body's energy in motion."

http://www.caroleeschneemann.com/uptoandincluding.html

Schneemann is known for her groundbreaking multimedia works, ranging from painting and film to politically charged performance and installation. Her work explores visual traditions, the body of the individual as it relates to social bodies, and preconceived notions of sexuality and gender. In Up to and Including Her Limits, a rope and harness hang above a huge canvas. Video monitors show a recording of the artist suspended naked above the canvas using her body to paint on it. With these remnants of a performance–video recordings, harness, and markings on a canvas–Schneemann addressed the male-dominated history of Abstract Expressionism and action painting.

http://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/carolee-schneemann-up-to-and-including-her-limits-1973-76

Schneemann’s iamge of her performance work reminded me quite a lot of Tracey Emin who is an English post-modern artist and has strong views on sexuality and gender. I am not interested in the top of the body and gender as such but the process that she has used to do the performance work, sort of letting your body do its own thing sort of accessing your subconscious… and not thinking of exactly what you are doing just moving. I find that words can appear rather cliché but it is interesting to write down your thoughts whatever your thinking at a certain time.

As I have said before I like the idea of before and after shots leaving mystery such as a series could show which could have been interesting in this case if it wasn’t more of a cinematic type of art piece.