This building was abandoned for a while. Squatters had moved into some of the apartments. At the time this photo was taken, the squatters had been removed and renovations had begun. It might be a condominium now. I prefer it with the Gordon Matta Clark treatment.
I recently watched a screening of Pierrot Le Fou, courtesy of the Calgary Cinematheque (www.calgarycinema.org) and the Plaza Theatre (www.theplaza.ca). Nancy Tousley gave an interesting talk prior to the screening drawing connections between the film, fine art (in particular painting) and comics. This photo is an homage in the use of colour – the red and blue that predominates in the film…and in the depiction of the open door… an invitation for the imagination.
Ferdinand: “Why do you look so sad?”
Marianne: “Because you speak to me in words and I look at you with feelings.”
There’s something I like about signs that have ceased to serve their initial purpose. I like how these signs that once supported an ad or message, trying to convince, prohibit, persuade, or sell us something become transformed through neglect, abandonment and unintended alteration (be it through the inclusion of a shadow, a graffiti writer’s tag, a broken shutter, or peeling paper). These signs when composed within a photograph create a new language, both on their own and in relation to other signs and objects. Text becomes image and image becomes text.
Tate Etc. Issue 16 – Summer 2009 has an article by David Batchelor on Monochromes, which can be found on line at: http://www.tate.org.uk/tateetc/issue16/colourchart2.htm. The passage on Found Monochromes was of particular interest to me. I had already started to photograph white boards and signs, but the article served to sharpen my attention to the idea of Found Art. Whereas the Ready Made was an everyday object transformed into art through its inclusion in the gallery space, Found Art is something discovered in the world that references an idea, or object, that has its origins in the art world. David Batchelor’s Found Monochromes would be one example. Another would be buildings (under construction, or renovation) wrapped in tarps which are reminiscent of Christo’s wrapped buildings and objects. Photographing Found Art could be just a documentary exercise, but I tend to think of it more as a hybrid of documentation and creation: the photograph is in itself a new work and put into an art context can be seen as such.
Graffiti was what drew my attention to walls initially, but I was always interested in more than just documenting a tag, piece, or stencil. I was interested in the spaces where graffiti was found: the back alleys, parking lots, dumpsters and train cars – places and things that we tend to disregard. Later I began to see these walls as a kind of palimpsest, as a form of collage, process and abstract art – albeit an art with multiple authors and in a constant state of flux due to forces both natural and human.
Edward Lewis 