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Untitled II (Previously Swallowed Small Artifacts), Detail.

Resource type
Date created
1997
Authors/Contributors
Contributor: Don Lee
Abstract
Clay’s "Untitled" series is an installation comprising three photographs illuminated in light boxes, two small framed oval images of photography and text, and black vinyl text installed at intervals across the gallery walls and spaced between the photographs. While the installation includes photography it nevertheless refers to painting. The composition, color and subject of the illuminated photographs recall Jacques-Louis David’s portrait of Juliette Récamier. Unlike Madame Récamier, the woman in Clay’s photographs, who is the artist herself, denies the viewer her gaze: her back and head are turned, and then she gets up and exits the frame. The images in the oval frames are similarly elusive by being fragmentary. Correspondingly, the wall text does not explain the photos and instead signals dreaming, daily life, and poetic reverie. Photographic clarity and meaning in language, especially in the gallery context, yield to private, inner experience.
Name
Untitled II (previously swallowed small artifacts), detail
Image
Width
1210
Height
1210
Description
Exhibition: Walter Phillips Gallery, Imaginary Standard Distance, Banff, Alberta, 2002.Collection:Vancouver Art Gallery Acquisition FundMaterial: backlit cibachrome.
Extent
25.5 x 25.5 x 5.75 inches
Copyright statement
Copyright is held by the author(s).
Scholarly level
Peer reviewed?
No
Member of collection

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