Niura Legramante Ribeiro
Reproductions distorting scale and depriving of characteristics the material density from originals create what André Malraux denominated “imaginary arts”[1] linked to his idea “Imaginary Museum” and made practical by photography that modifies reality perception. “Imaginary arts” conception seems to be the mobilizing operation from photographic works in the “Fundos (Backgrounds)” series made by the artist Lucia Koch. In this photographic series another vital question it is made is the relation between “external referential and the message made by such medium” as it would be said by Philippe Dubois in “Photographic Act”. Through the view of both considerations we may find a possible pertinent reading for that series works.
Interested in explaining dimension the photographic image can give to real, and trying to create situations of space projections. Lucia Koch photographs inside boxes of pasta, milk, wine and crackers in works like Spaguetti, 2003 (250 x 125cm), Tagliatelle, 2001 (275 x 125cm), Fusilli (275 x 460cm), Tetrapak (300 x 400cm) and Cream Cracker, 2004 (275 x 300cm), putting such images in achitetural scales, printed on photographic paper. Thus, the artist ends up unrealizing the originals by creating imaginary spaces. These instigating titles are about original product from the photographed boxes.
The photos usually have a longitudinal fitting leaving visible the folds that make the bottoms of the boxes with their side perspective lines accentuated. The images are in great dimensions and presented in a way that establish a narrow communication with the expositive spaces. Whenever it is possible, in order to work as space extensor, the photographs of these boxes inside must be equivalent to height and width of the wall they are placed. Thus, the artist establishes a relation between photographic-architectonic space while that and topological space in which it is the spectators taking them to its inside as if they could enter not only by looking but also with their bodies because the intention is to mimic the image with scale of the location architecture provoking a spatial continuity effect.
The boxes’ folds lines are drivers of our spatial senses for the images’ inside performing a centripetal force, and therefore establishing a three-dimensional illusion. A certain exaggeration in the perspective lines is obtained by using wide-angle lens. At the very first moment we stand before the image, by its dimension and lines of force it attracts us causing the feeling of being inside that space. By having just a more investigating look we leave the virtual space, and then we get over our conscious of what is real. It is the experience in being inside and outside the space. By proceeding in taking a box, catching the image in deep from this object, and putting such image on a wall of an art gallery or museum[2], Koch executes the action of passing from real to image and from such image to create a situation of virtual space.
The spatial analogy between object and the gallery architecture goes beyond a mere optical illusionism producing an exchange between real and virtual experience of the space. There is a constant movement of the virtual three-dimensionality generated by image in large scale to the three-dimensionality related to the work[3].
There are no excesses in “Fundos (Backgrounds)” series. Everything is very economical and because of that it only works when it is established relations of belongings, coherence with architecture of the place. Hence, it disqualifies object original scale in order to require analogy to architectonic space scale in which image is inserted. Photograph scales are determined by expositive physical space scale then, because the more mimic established with the local the more the image will accomplish its function as assured by the artist:
“I see the photographed boxes as virtual spaces, a continuation of the real space; I find the dimensions for the work according to headroom or door opening; at times they could be horizontal, others vertical which seem doors for corridors[4].”
Architectures of such interiors do not constitute enclosure spaces because lights from the windows are valorized. The artist uses only natural light which enters through original openings from the boxes and that ends up working as windows or skylights since the way the artist places the final image light enters through the side wall or through the side wall or through the roof and simulates a real environment. On the box wall where light is reflected we can see which way it comes the light as real space. Thus, the light also contributes to assure a spatial situation as the artist clarifies:
“ Projection of natural light inside the boxes creates verisimilitude looking like sunlight incidence in an architectonic space. And also if we identify a kind of recognizable space like a room or corridor the effect is intensified. It works better[5].”
By valorizing the light that penetrates thought the box openings the artist seems to pact even more with imaginary architectonic spaces. The light as part of such imagination helps to corroborate with the creation of such space.
In some works from “Fundos (Backgrounds)” series the artist recurred to the procedure of putting color filters at some bar patterns on light passages. Such devices are from previous works, from procedures which also were used in real architectonic scale models. The artist has already made interventions with filters in lights from skylights like the one she made in a corridor from Chaves Barcellos Gallery, in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and in a building in Portugal.
Her eldest works try to investigate relation of light and external and internal spaces, the way the inside of a specific place and the external image that it is observed from inside may be affected by existing devices[6]. In works like the one she made in an architectonic environment at Ilha da Casa da Pólvora[7] she interfered in the light that penetrated in a house through colored filters placed on the windows. Visitors who entered the house could observe a monochromatic landscape: sometimes could be blue, sometimes could be orange or gray, as if colored curtains passed before the eyes.
If light colors density mutation and displacement inside the space interested the artist in the work presented to II Mercosur Biennial[8], in 1999 it does not take place in “Fundos (Backgrounds)” series. First, in such Biennial the spectators confronted themselves with the real space therefore being perfectly possible to observe light colors mutations if the visitor stayed in the space for a long time. Here, even talking about photographic images, if the artist wished it could have been registered specific light mutations inside the boxes through several photos. But it is not presented to us a set of images capable to make evident in a narrative way the same space in different light conditions since it is not about photography as a document but the embodiment of a staring look at the moment of the image extraction. In her interest in light passages in the space mainly in the photographic series hereinto she does not stop reflecting the first condition of the photography existence: an obscure box with light passage. This basic operation is the first dominium of the individual who stays behind the camera and who can place filters for catching image according to the result they want to obtain. When it is seen the bars pattern reflected over internal surfaces from the boxes, it cannot be ignored the obscure camera resource used by old painting masters to capture the real, many times such camera was a dark room in which the artist copied the draw reflected on the wall.
“Fundos (Backgrounds)” series which has an illusionist intention of continuity of real space do not stop making transgressing operations that involve perception of such real through photography, a discussion about the lexical of the photographic image mainly when one reads the titles that seem to perfectly answer the concept of “imaginary arts” brought by Malraux, who would say “imaginary space”:
“The works lose their scale. It is when the miniature becomes a tapestry, painting, a stained glass window relative (…). Reproduction created imaginary arts…, systematically falsifying objects scale, presenting marks of eastern seals and coins as if stamping of columns it was about, amulets as they where statues. (…) Jewelry acquires the sculpture scale; at the end it finds its significance in the photography series where reliquary and statues have the same importance[9].”
Such considerations refer to author analysis in relation to reproductions of work of art. Such affirmatives say also about desrealization that photography makes possible in relation to the original object. Therefore if for the author of Voices of Silence photography can make a miniature to have the proportion of a tapestry, a box of Spaghetti or Tagliatelle, it also can have the proportion of an architectural space, what testifies the falsification character of the scale of this real, transformation of such real by photography. If “fragment is the master of imaginary art school”[10] in case the work of Lucia Koch, enlargement will be “the master of imaginary arts”. What such works certify is the evidence that photographic apparatus is an imaginary creator.
“Fundos (Backgrounds)” series has a questioning condition about photography discursive genesis as a science, as an accurate reproduction of the world, as ‘infalible knowledge’ to which it was attached when in its appearance in XIX century. In this sence it can also be evoked the assertive of Philippe Dubois in retracing historical path of different theoretical postures regarding to photography and its relation to the referntial. Referring to that century the autor says:
Photography was massively considered as an imitation a little more perfect than reality. It has mimetic capacity according to age speeches by its technical nature, by its mechanical procedure that permits to make to appear an image of the “automatic”, “objective”, almost natural (according to the optical and chemistry laws) manner with no direct intervention from the artist hand[11].
This conception of photography as a “mirror of the real” pointed by Dubois in speeches from intellectuals like Baudelaire – “photography as an instrument of documental memory of the real” – and Taine – photography “imitates accurately and with no possibility of mistakes the object form that must be produced”[12], contributed throughout the years to give credibility to real, to confirmation of the automatism of photography technical genesis. Books authors, technical processes researches and with market interests, also helped to spreach such understanding, when it was invented, like Talbot in The pencil of nature (1844-1846) who, to demonstrate the scientific character of collotype, said in that publication that “the board of the present work were printed by the only light action with no help from the pencil of the artist. It is the paintings from the sun and not, as some imagines, imitation gravures”[13]. Even without taking into account that its images refred to a repertoire extracted from pictural tradition, photography in its optic had a mechanical determinism in capturing image from real. The title from his book or from Muffone’s Como pinta o sol (1987), in fact denounced hybrid character of photography, such character already pointed by Annateresa Fabris in her work about Photography and Plastic Art System[14]. What Lucia Koch’s series seems to assure is exactly the inverse of the speech of photographic mechanicity, the absence of the subject. In fact what her works assure is the presence of the subject as interpreter of real through the usage of photography codes, thus, with illusory possibilities permitted by photography. The photographic scale that is used suits at the same time to deny the diemnsion of the referent, and also to create simulations of architetonic spatiality. So, it builds an apparent spatial veracity, an apparent spectacular image of real. In performing investigations about the syntax of the image constitution in photography, Koch inscribes her works in photographic nature inquisitive procedures. “Fundos (Backgrounds)” series uses photography to speak about the own photography.
[1] MALRAUX, André. As Vozes do Silêncio. Lisboa: Edição de Livros do Brasil, s.d, p-23.
[2] “Fundos (Backgrounds)” series took part in the fooling exhibitions among others: “Ipermercati dell’ Arte”, at Contemporary Center Palazzo delle Papesse, in Siena, from Oct/2004 to Jan/2005; “Hyper”, from May to Sep/2004, in Santander Cultural, in Porto Alegre; “Paralela” to 26º Biennial International of São Paulo, in 2004; 8º Biennial Istanbul, Cagaloglu Hamami, Istanbul, Sep/Dec/2003; “Futuribles/ up & coming”, at ARCO Madrid, in 2003; “Arte Foto”, from Dec/2002 to Feb/2003, at Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil in Rio de Janeiro; “Subverção dos Meios”, Itaú Cultural, 2003; CCS center for curatorial studies do Bard College, Annandale-on Hudson, NY, in Apr/2002; Solo exhibition at Galeria Triangulo in May and June of 2002; “Opera Prima”, Novo Museu de Curitiba, 2002; invited artist of annual program at Centro Cultural São Paulo, in São Paulo.
[3] Luiza Interlenghi “The Space Inside Out”, text for artist exhibition in April/2002, at CCS centre for curatorial studies do Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.
[4] Statement by Lucia Koch to the author on July 8, 2003.
[5] Idem.
[6]In the city of Porto, the artist presented two sttlings: “Squatters” Project (Museu Serralves e Witte de With museum para o Porto in 2001) adding in an external wall, color filters and diffusers used in cinematographic illumination: amber, transparent yellow-white and a sequence of blue and violet; for Bienal de Pontevedra, in 2000, she substituted the roof opaque tiles in an external veranda by transparent in seven different nuances of yellow, orange, gray and violet. For further details about such exhibitions consult the already referred text by Luiza Interlengui.
[7] The artist placed filters on the windows of the abandoned houses from such island near Porto Alegre, Brasil during the event Arte Construtora in November, 1996.
[8] During the II Bienal do Mercosul in Porto Alegre in 1999, the artist put a set of filters of different colors in the windows rectangles in a room what generated displacements of colored lights according to intensity and movement of the sun inside the room.
[9] Op. Cit. Malraux, pp-23-24.
[10] Idem, p. 24
[11]See chapter I from “Da Verossimilitude ao Índice” in DUBOIS, Philippe. O Acto Fotográfico. Lisboa; Vega, s.d., pp. 21-30.
[12] Op. cit. Dubois, pp.23 e 22.
[13] Apud Anatereza Fabris, “A Fotografia e o sistema das Artes Plásticas” in Fotografia usos e funções do século XIX. São Paulo: Editora da Universidade de São Paulo, 1991, p. 174.
[14] Idem, pp. 173-198.
2005
Published in Porto Arte magazine, n. 22, May 2005. Translated by Leila Kommers