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MASKS, FACES, APPEARANCES ,
PORTRAITS
These works, beginning middle 2003,
have to be looked at, following some fundamental considerations
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FIRST, they are
sculptures made in special conditions, psychologically and
materially. The chosen material is strong corrugated cardboard,banal
and easy to find, demanding great technical and esthetical
constraints. That was the way to "reach to" the
latent primitive area of the human mind remaining in everyone,
despite our high cultural degree of development. The great
need of spontaneity naturally excludes in this manner to
refer volontary to prevailing codes being "cultural"
or "contemporaneous". In such conditions,it would
have to be considered as Primitive or Popular Art, despite
the results.
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SECONDLY,the fundamental choice is concerned first by
"faces" (human or human-like faces),which also
correspond to the main recurrent and obsessive human interrogations.The
questions "Who am I" and "Who are we"
being fundamental,universal and timeless conditions of representation.
These sculptures came first as "masks" ,then evolved
in larger shapes (busts, parts of the body, accessories,
animals...), "appearances of groups" (they "appear"
exactly like ghosts or visions,in the same way like each
face),and are also sometimes shown as "bas-relief"
with masked faces or portraits.
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THIRDLY,the need
of making these faces demanding such realizations, (being
first the creation of the works ), demands in turn a "reflexive"
part trying to make clearer the whole project and seeking
its meanings.
This time is the time of
research with addition of texts, pictures, display, exhibitions,
etc...The role of the "amateurs-watchers"becomes
very important at that time, as these "faces"
playing through multiple variations and metamorphoses,may
reflect like a mirror would do.
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These "masks" may
be seen as involuntary and random portraits,as well. (and
can also play like "truer portraits" than conventional
ones).
TO SUMMARIZE,we could
say that this work is a kind of an "auto-ethno-graphical
experience";as the matter it investigates is nothing
other than the imaginary material of the maker.However,
with some following precision: that the aim of this investigation
is "not mainly" the personal subjectivity of the
sculptor,but also the purpose of mediation of collective
representations,revealing them when hidden inside of each
one.
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All these dialectical reasons make the direction of the
one-going research unpredictable,as anyone can understand.It
has to become an intereactive process ,in addition to being
a dialectical one.
Eric STRAW, nov 2004
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