2017aclaggett_001

Claggett , April

April Claggett

United States

1964

MFA - Fine Arts

2017

Drawing

MA (Syracuse University), BA (Swarthmore College)

oil on canvas

Light Matter 4

painting

2017

48" x 52"

Light Matter 4. The anonymous figure is placed fairly squarely in the center and the point of view is nearly birds-eye. A cruciform shadow divides the light and dissects the figure in the middle. Figure is curled around this point of dissection. The sense of space is interesting because there is a proprietary vantage point. The centrality of the composition gives a sense that the anonymous figure is acting as a symbol. Any naturalistic context for the image, such as that implied by perspectival axes of the shadow, and the oblique tilt of the figure on a ground plane, is a narrative of very few words-- an epigram for the interaction of nonmatter with matter. There is an expressive effect of the figure being "pinned" by the light, which was not a conscious intention (because actually I feel a rational interest and calm detachment), but I am letting it live in case it's true. Many (in this part of the world) read the cruciform shape of the shadow as a symbol, ie. Christian, which is not intentional. It is a device to cut up the figure's self-possession and introduce the ability of light and shadow to describe the figure. I also do not use light and shadow symbolically, although viewers inclined to see the Cross are also inclined to look for moral theater in the painting. I am not using light to represent enlightenment or hope or oppressive rationality; and, I am not using shadow to represent moral darkness, oppression or freedom from rationality. Some say they feel the isolation of the figure, the loneliness, and some form of oppression which has been further identified as sexist, religious, and societal. I suppose I can own the isolation and loneliness as things I feel acutely, but I don't think they are personal to me. Perhaps I think that everyone should feel alone in a fundamental way (born that way, die that way) and that the democratization of loneliness I hope might help bring us all together in a post-identity politics world. The work is placed leaning against the wall, at a low angle to the floor. The idea here is that a continuity of actual space between the viewer and the painting is activated. It is the sense of shared ground. The point-of-view from above places the perspectival vanishing point into the floor, blocked by it. The Renaissance development of the vanishing point located near a horizon line placed the human viewer in direct line with infinity, with the world arranged according to this organizing principal. The organizing instrument was the eye, whose hegemony has persisted. The eye is proximal to the brain, attached to it directly by a very large optic nerve, and has become emblematic of human intelligence, wakefulness, conscious experience. It has also evolved as the seat of judgement, aiding and abetting harmful distortions between people such as racism, sexism and other forms of bigotry. So, because I hold a different worldview, I make various subversions here. The lack of visual contact with the eyes of the protagonist, the visual ambiguity of ethnicity, age, sexual orientation and other cultural constructs are iconographic subversions, while cutting off perspectival illusionism and activating the body before the eye can master are phenomenological and technical subversions. For curated this way, the painting beckons an approach from across the room. The viewer cannot consume the painting on the wall in a traditional way that sets up parallel and vertical orientations between the painting and the observer. The natural positioning in front of a painting on the wall, the centuries-old contemplative distance, is here tilted and only becomes most readable after the actual floor has been engaged. The traditional consumption of the painting can only happen at an immersive distance, aided by the larger scale.

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