{"id":36810,"date":"2018-09-05T08:51:50","date_gmt":"2018-09-05T14:51:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=36810"},"modified":"2018-10-04T10:13:38","modified_gmt":"2018-10-04T16:13:38","slug":"film-ghosts-achieve-new-narrative-in-justin-chouinards-appendages-of-sense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/film-ghosts-achieve-new-narrative-in-justin-chouinards-appendages-of-sense\/","title":{"rendered":"Film Ghosts Achieve New Narrative in Justin Chouinard’s Appendages of Sense"},"content":{"rendered":"
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“Just Won’t Stick”<\/p><\/div>\n

[dropcap]When[\/dropcap] presented with a scenario involving what to rescue in the event of a natural disaster, most people say they would choose their photographs. Why? What makes a photograph so important? The former director of photography for The Museum of Modern Art, John Szarkowski, curated an exhibition in 1964 called The Photographer\u2019s Eye,<\/em> where he argued one of the reasons photography is such a unique art form, different from all the others, is a photograph is how people remember. A photograph becomes the thing itself. It becomes a symbol of the event, a physical token to remind you of history, so we apply emotional connection and meaning to the object. This idea that a photograph is a precious document still permeates our culture, even though most photographs are now stored in a cloud, forever protected from a disaster.<\/h4>\n

With his current exhibition, Appendages of Sense,<\/em> Justin Chouinard challenges the preciousness of photography by deconstructing the interleaving object used to store a photograph. Prior to the rise of digital photography, telephones with cameras, or the cloud, to record an event a shutterbug needed a substrate able to respond and capture light \u2014 a negative. The negative was the photo\u2019s safety net: if the photograph was damaged, the negative could be used to reprint the precious object. In the case of slide film, it was<\/em> the precious object. The negative captures the memories, becoming the ghost of the photograph, and the print is the body.<\/h4>\n

In his artist\u2019s statement, Chouinard acknowledges the preciousness and falsification of the physical photograph, and the act of creating one. The shutterbug is a trickster. He states:<\/h4>\n

Among the alienation of family gatherings, in the celebrations and icons of hosting, cameras held by attendees served as eyes and recording devices. Staged moments and improvised gestures. Items seen worthy of acceptance by connecting posterity for them to contemplate and meditate on. For who are the ghosts present?<\/h4>\n

Negative and slide film is made of layers of gelatin with red, green, and blue dye dots. When projected, the light passes through, blending the colored dots together, like how you see a pointillist painting. With Appendages of Sense,<\/em> Chouinard uses found negatives, separating the film layers, and allowing the viewer to see the dye dots, the multiplicity within the film, the folded gelatin, and the artist\u2019s brush strokes. He lets those ghosts free. Then using the altered negatives, he prints a new body. In many instances, the ghosts are now duplicated in various proportions to each other. They sit behind, in front of and next to each other, almost mocking the original meaning of the photograph. The folds of the gelatin act like veils or shrouds being pulled back to reveal the afterlife. Some images have brush strokes or dye smears, showing how Chouinard helped coerce the layers of gelatin. Each image is also given a title to further force the viewer to read and interpret the new narrative.<\/h4>\n
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“Built by the Finches”<\/p><\/div>\n

Several images in the series really illustrate each of these controlled and happenstance deconstructions. With \u201cBuilt by the Finches,\u201d the ribbons of crumpled gelatin create a silhouette of a landscape, or even a nest of some sort, resting on top of the imagery, which happens to be an outside scene of an old truck and small mobile home. The purple\/blue wash in \u201cPlanted in the Weeds\u201d has a horizontal movement that is haunting. You can\u2019t help but stare at this unnatural color as it blurs the subject. The motion and color do not necessarily denote weeds, but the image of a young man in dress clothes posing in a yard is very familiar. We have all seen prom photos or been to a wedding where this act has been required. The crumpled-up ribbons of gelatin are washed over with yellow\/green horizontal brush strokes. The feet of this young man are firmly planted in his pose, hiding or sprouting from the brush stroke bushes.<\/h4>\n

Within a couple images, \u201cDay Park,\u201d and \u201cPlaying Changes,\u201d the viewer can really see the dots of dye. <\/em>\u201cDay Park\u201d is a photograph of a shoeless woman, holding something, while walking in a park. You can also see a volleyball net in the background. When you look closer, you start to see the duplicate views of her face and legs, separated from each other and larger than the other image. The dots and subject matter remind the viewer of Seurat\u2019s famous pointillist masterpiece, except in Chouinard\u2019s image there isn\u2019t someone walking a pet monkey. In \u201cJust Won\u2019t Stick,\u201d it looks more like the dye reticulated as it dried within the brush strokes. The reticulation is resting on the faces of the two people in the image and really helps emphasize the materiality of the original negatives and how Chouinard didn\u2019t have a lot of control while the manipulated film dried. However, the clever title clues the viewer into Chouinard\u2019s understanding of his materials and their nature. He can only do so much and then let the ghosts inside do what they want.<\/h4>\n
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“Day Park”<\/p><\/div>\n

In presenting his 14 images, Chouinard has shown intelligence and respect toward the overall meaning of his series: first, in his choice of using found or secondhand frames; second, the scale of the images in relation to their frames; finally, the matting and placement of the image within the frame. The glassless frames have wear and tear, with chips, scratches and gouges. Normally, photographs in a gallery are framed under glass to protect the image, reinforcing its preciousness. These frames denote images you might see in the hallway of your great auntie\u2019s house: they have taken some abuse over the years, but still hang proudly on the walls, gathering dust and fading. Without the glass, the viewer is also able to examine the images more closely. This intimacy with the image makes the images precious, again, even though everything about their presentation says otherwise. One image, \u201cThe Hats Are Eyes,\u201d is in an old mirrored frame, forcing the viewer to address the image while seeing themselves in the frame. Another piece, \u201cRT,\u201d showing the image of a boy and his horse, is framed using old shipping palette wood. It is rough, natural, and innocent, just like the photograph it houses.<\/h4>\n

Chouinard\u2019s use of scale for each image helps drive home the new narrative for each of them. The largest print in the exhibition is roughly 9\u201d x 12\u201d but many of the images are small, wallet-size images, the way we used to carry our images around prior to the smart phone and the cloud. When framing a photograph, the size of a print usually dictates the size of the mat and frame: if you want an image to have more prominence on a wall and the photograph isn\u2019t a large print, you use a larger frame. For one image, Chouinard\u2019s clever use of print scale and framing really draws the viewer in. \u201cGwen,\u201d is in a dark red frame, around 24\u201dx18\u201d with a small 7\u201dx5\u201d print. The photograph has gold ribbon brush strokes of dye over a small image of a face. The large scale of the frame in relation to the size of the image really is reminiscent of Warhol\u2019s \u201cGold Marilyn.\u201d<\/h4>\n