The ship that launched a thousand faces
Baroni, Julia
2022
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The ship that launched a thousand faces is a maximalist attempt to enact my visual language on the gallery space, to transmit the pleasurable release that the process of drawing is for me, and to
make people guess about the visual metaphors employed. The work explores themes of loneliness, longing, aggression, and ambivalence about (admiration for and harshness toward) women's bodies.
The ... read moreproject consists of A. a set of manipulable life-size paintings on acetate; B. a few smaller paintings on canvas; C. a printed publication that includes original writing and a roadmap to my symbols; and D., a seventeen-foot-tall mural.
Each composition of the life-size paintings is an amalgamation of drawings I extracted from my real sketchbook, printed on transparent film, and airbrushed from the back, the side opposite the one printed one. The airbrush’s quality of spitting out paint mimics my excretive relationship to drawing. It also creates an airy texture reminiscent of memory images and digital painting. The paintings sit on a large, low plinth, and both sides are visible. Because the frontsides have been more intentionally mediated, the backsides become unexpected and archetypal. Viewers are encouraged to explore both sides of the work, the new images they make when they play around with the paintings, and to consider what it feels like to drag and twist a flat human body of about their own size.
The smaller paintings are dreamy intermissions to the excessive linework in the rest of the project. These works focus on living vicariously through one or two inanimate objects, like light switches or an empty toilet bowl rim jet.
The publication explores impossible wishes and thoughts on making art. It becomes a kind of illustrated artist statement. Processed through an ephemeral medium, it fits this point in time.
The mural, Four Eyes, links everything together. It is yet another scanned sketchbook drawing. This time I used a projector to transfer the image onto the wall. The mural links themes of spitting out and of seeing and being seen across my whole project. Visible from outside Anderson Gallery, it is also a curatorial strategy to draw people into the show.
Sizes variable
Materials: Airbrush, acrylic, acetate, inkjet print, Risograph print
Keywords: Release, desire, play, selfhood, America, women, everyday, futility, figurative painting, phenomenology, printmaking, psychoanalysis, sketchbookread less - ID:
- 8g84n248g
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