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SURFACE

Photographs and Paintings of Venice , 2006

I had an agenda. I returned to Venice , a city that I loved to the point of idealizing everything about it. Oh yes, I would live there someday, and I would create art amongst incredible beauty underscored by a forced simple life – probably the only way I could resign myself to simplicity. But Venice had changed. I planned a series of photographs there based on earlier work with “mini-me” (my alter ego see www.judithkindler.com). I would place her here and there in staged ways, planting myself permanently through her and capturing it all on film. The first day there, mini-me broke in pieces after our first photo shoot off the balcony of the Europa/Regina. I took it as a sign. The second day, my husband and I ventured fourth to begin the walk through the entirety of Venice we had planned for over the next 4 days. What I quickly discovered was Venice had changed. Over what seemed like 80% of the city, was graffiti. No magnificent building was left unscathed . . . angry, comical, stupid graffiti. Clearly some homeowners had attempted to paint over it again and again. One graffiti artist randomly marked over another (at least I thought it was random). I was heartbroken . . . my beautiful “idealized” Venice was gone and in its wake I saw bitterness, anger, and mindless vandalism on property. It was depressing, really depressing.

I changed my agenda. I quickly decided that this is what I must capture. A moment in time, reflected off walls and surfaces that have been through many ages and have seen many markings, postings, heard many voices. The city that appears to never change, now appears, not only to change, but struggles to cover up that change. I became totally absorbed in the idea of time and change and the need for us to leave a mark on something. I shot image after image with my Canon EOS 5D Full Frame Digital Camera. The lens I used was a Canon zoom EF 24-70 mm 1:2.8 Ultrasonic, one of the heaviest lenses in the world (I found out as I carried this around Venice day after day.)

Turns out that graffiti is believed to originate in Italy . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti The origin of the word graffiti comes from the Italian “graffiato”, to mark or scratch on a surface. Evidence of graffiti was found on ancient ruins as in the Catacombs of Rome or the walls of Pompeii . In contemporary graffiti, there is a hierarchy of markings; a graffiti etiquette of sorts. A more profound or creative mark can appropriately go over a lesser tag or mark. The idea of appropriation of property is a central theme for the graffiti artist and that the property is in public view is important. There is a need to draw attention to a view point or an image or a tag representing the artist’s voice or identity. In some way, I felt, that by capturing on film these marks and the history of warn out surfaces, I was “appropriating” the appropriated and now leaving my own mark. This is the historic process. I was, in my own way, becoming part of Venice ’s accumulative story told on the walls.

The purely worn down surfaces of buildings also became a major part of my attention. The painted and repainted, worn off and deteriorated surfaces originally constructed so many years before, tell a story of the transitional nature of life; that we are also getting worn out, we have our scars and our hidden marks in life. This return to Venice , showed me so much about life, about myself, about our needs to be heard, but especially about the unique contradictions that happen as life plays itself out.

Many of the images speak to cultural ambivalences, those contradictions that happen when a word of graffiti, like “assassin,” happens to fall next to an embedded shrine of Mary and the Child in a wall. The unconscious combinations of things, words and emotions that happen over time, played out on these surfaces, come front and center in this collection of images. Even the images of glass surfaces revealing objects randomly staged in windows bring surprising comedy as well as ambiguity.

Not surprising for me, an artist who has painted most of my life, the photographs all became composed as if they were paintings. But these paintings had been developed over months, years, centuries by many artists and artisans. Now, somehow by documenting them, they were finally finished (at least for this moment in time.)

Now I am embarking on introducing the photography into mixed media paintings with encaustics and oils. By inscribing my own markings on the surface of the wax, I am a contributor to the history of these wonderful surfaces

It was a great trip. Judith Kindler, April 26th, 2006

PAINTINGS: