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March 14, 2007
Laura Splan
From her artist's statement:
My work explores perceptions of beauty and horror, comfort and discomfort. I use anatomical and medical imagery as a point of departure to explore these dualities and our ambivalence towards the human body. Viruses, blood, and x-rays of bones and viscera can be at once unsetting and enticing. I often combine scientific images and materials with more domestic or familiar ones. The ornamentation of wallpaper or the design of a doily lends a sort of relief in its familiarity and pleasing pattern. This juxtaposition creates a response that fluctuates between seduction and repulsion, comfort and alienation. I try to create work that evokes a dichotomous experience with formal imagery that upon closer inspection reveals some uncomfortable truth about our cultural and biological conditions. My work attempts to challenge our constructed responses to these images by triggering a double take in which the viewer re-evaluates their initial perceptions.
I am often inspired by the inherent qualities of a material or process. I enjoy the experimentation that goes into the discovery that the consistency of blood facilitates its use as ink or the thickness of vinyl tubing lends itself to being knit into a scarf. Deciphering the narrative implications and poetic possibilities within these qualities is an important part of my practice. I am interested in an exploration into the historical and contemporary meaning that a culture projects onto an object, material, or image as well as in an investigation into its technical attributes. It is often important that the work be reflexive and self-contained -- how not only the form of an object can reveal meaning but also the materials and process by which it was made.
Laura has produced a number of works featuring knitting including:
Exam Gown, 2002, mixed media installation
Exam Gown is a revised gown design that is hand knit out of machine washable yarn. The personal and labor intensive quality of the knitting process evokes ideas of a more personal and less disposable institutional environment; images of a patient knitting one’s own gown during an extended stay in a hospital or perhaps the hospital staff themselves caring so much about their patients that they knit such gowns. Laura Splan
Blood Scarf, 2002, chromogenic prints mounted on aluminum
Blood Scarf depicts a scarf knit out of clear vinyl tubing. An intravenous device emerging out of the user's hand fills the scarf with blood. The implied narrative is a paradoxical one in which the device keeps the user warm with their blood while at the same time draining their blood drip by drip. Laura Splan
Catheter Bag Cozy, 2001, mixed media installation
A continuous flow of blue liquid is pumped through vinyl tubing. The tubing begins as a tidy ball of "yarn" holding knitting needles and flows through a knit cozy around a catheter bag. Finally the blue liquid drips onto cotton padding. Embroidery on the cotton padding reads "familiarity breeds contempt". The photographs present the typical absorbency tests of diaper and tampon commercials. Laura Splan
Her more recent work continues to explore biology and art.
Posted by glittrgirl at March 14, 2007 10:42 AM
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