Transience in the Face of Visual Forcefulceness
It is possible to obtain a clear view of the recent work by Catherine Yass (London, 1963) through five pieces, and this is what the Galería Estiarte of Madrid offers with “Afloat”. Consistent with the explorations carried our since the beginning of her career, Yass investigates one of the circumstances surrounding our daily life but which we do not usually notice: the influence of events in the economic, political and social spheres of our lives. Although Yass could have directed thus investigation along wider channels, she has taken architecture as one of basic references points to explore a repeated idea in her work, the notion of power. From this, the artist seeks to confront the spectator with the questioning of its most real existential dimension. Urban constructions and great engineering projects thus become fit reference points that serve to demonstrate to what extend they can cause reality and the identifications that an individual has of it.
In her photographs, the use that Yass gives to the positive and negative, the manipulation of light, desaturation and evanescence, stimulates the loss of the sense of reality in a very special manner, but always from a lyrical way. Pieces like Nan pu (2006) or Huanghuayan pu west (2006) seemed to make up true contemporary recreations of the Great Canal that Canaletto painted so many times in the 16th century. However, this idyllic vision is not kept op of very long, for immediately afterwards we are confronted with the clarification of the image of a non-place, of a sombre industrial space which, in this case, has as its setting the Three Goges Dam of the River Yangtze in Shanghai. Undoubtedly, Yass’s work approaches that of Gaston Bachelard in the reflection on the dimension of space, which …”for its ‘immensity’, the two spaces, the space of privacy and the space of the world are made harmonious. When one fathoms the great loneliness of man, the two immensities touch, they are confused”(1).
Another exploration of the psychological consequences that all on present-day man due to the confrontation with an environment which is oversized in scale and subjugating in its concept, is exemplified by Gorge. This 16 mm film presents, in a loop, forty for seconds of a completely real image, which seems, rather, a moment of undecipherable fantasy. Making use of experimental film references, devoid of plot or characters, Yass develops the sense of a discourse which reiterates the nature of her pure visuality: the image of a landscape. This, turned 180 degrees, produces a momentary confusion in the viewer, a river with a boat sailing gently, and an object’s movement in the passing of a vague time, which after a time, we clarify what it is. This is precisely the aim of the work offered in “Afloat”, where she plays with imprecision and the visual forcefulness of a power space to be deciphered from the calm transience of our reading.
(1) Bachelard, Gaston, The Poetics of Space. Madrid, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2000. p. 241.
ARTECONTEXTO. Arte, cultura, nuevos medios. Madrid, Nº 22 / 2009 / 2, pp. 128-129.
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