arcadia university art gallery  

Fictions + Facture:
Recent Work by Dennis Kuronen

September 8 - October 25, 2009

Text first prepared by Dennis Kuronen to introduce the Curtain Series in a group exhibition entitled “Parallel Visions” at the Sam Sorer Gallery, Lincoln, England, 2007.

“I've always been more interested in 'how' things mean, rather than 'what' things mean,” to paraphrase Roland Barthes.

In art, there is a place where matter ends, and the mind begins. In a 1927 publication of the avant-garde review magazine, i10, there is a discussion of photography, painting, and the effect of "facture”, the physical process responsible for the producing the surface of a picture. In looking at a painting, we might notice the texture or the facility of the brushwork. Proponents of painting as a superior art form made much of this "facture" in painting and of the ensuing tension between the painted surface (as a material) and the image it conveyed (as a mental concept). Some writers asserted that photography had none of this necessary tension, and hardly any facture at all.

In a search for meaning, a "gestalt of content", as it were, the mind cannot resist the impulse to recognize, assemble or even force possible meanings from an art object. Certain domains of content bring their own histories, sometimes as an enrichment, sometimes as baggage. The history of modern painting is unavoidably tethered to the tension between imagery and the picture plane. Abstract painting, in particular, makes much of the vocabulary of flatness, both as metaphor and as an organizational device. In contrast, photography, even abstract photography, struggles to establish a vigorous dialogue between the image and the physical object itself. Obviously, much of the photographic dialogue revolves around a photograph's visual confirmation of a moment of reality.

In most cases, the meaning is informed by our expectations: as a visual effect, as an archetype, or as a social concept. For instance, it is hard for an image of an undressed woman to not reference the social history of the "ideal" feminine. Sometimes this relationship exists in a denial of or its distance from classical forms of beauty. Degas' paintings of women in the bath or Sally Mann's photographs of family nakedness both have a place in the long line of female forms presented to our gaze. Are these images erotic? Or is our viewing primarily mediated by our assumption that a nude must have an erotic element or intent?

Artwork I respond to often involves a yearning for more information. This desire for closure of content seems similar to the yearning we have when we want to "possess" someone in a physical way. Much has been written about the naturally voyeuristic impulse of photography, and how taking someone's picture appropriates much more than their likeness alone. It has also been observed that, often, "less is more". That paradox of desire—that yearning and gratification have an uneasy, even adversarial relationship—has engaged image-makers for a long time. Explicitness may be sexual, but it is rarely sensual.

In my larger images, typically the closer one is to the work, the less one can see. To visually resolve (possess) the image (sometimes of a woman, sometimes not) you must get some distance from the work. In this way, there is a graphic ordering or an abstraction of desire, a commentary on yearning and fulfillment.

In the tension set up by the ambiguity of facture in my work, I hope to force our attention to a consideration of how we assemble a meaning when we look at art. What is photographically certified and what has been digitally altered? What is authentic evidence of the artist's handwork in his struggle to depict? Finally, I think it is in this attenuation of meaning that the true content gains its currency.

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Curtain Series (3)
Curtain Series (3), 2007
color photographs mounted to plastic panels
36" x 21" x 4"

Curtin Series (4)
Curtain Series (4), 2007
color photographs mounted to plastic panels
38 1/2" x 28 1/4" x 4"