Failure

Posted on April 24, 2012 by elizamacken

In his essay, “On the Unrepresentable in Pictures,” art historian James Elkins discusses our contemporary interest in representations that fail. These inadequate images signal the inadequacy of representation.

I have an abiding interest in the inadequacy of of representation. My inability to produce an accurate,”real” and lasting image encourages me to continue making images. What Elkins describes as the “irresolvable ambiguities” of representation provide a vast, emancipatory territory for the image maker to explore.

New notebook

Posted on April 11, 2012 by elizamacken

I’m not sure why, but I keep trying to figure out why I’m doing what I’m doing. This preoccupation is getting in the way of just making the work.

So. I’ve started a new notebook. I’ll just see where it takes me.

A problematic genre

Posted on March 28, 2012 by elizamacken

In his essay, “The Portrait’s Dispersal” Ernst Van Alphen describes contemporary portraiture as “a problematic genre” that represents “the loss of self instead of its consolidation.” The fragile and provisional subjectivity represented within a contemporary portrait cannot (and will not) bestow authority on its subject, as traditional portraiture was thought to do.

These small drawings represent faces that emerge from a process of material exploration as well as a meditation on the limits of representation. If a face is not based on a particular subject, can it still be a face?