Alma de la Serra: Linkages
Artist(s):
Title:
- Linkages
Exhibition:
Creation Year:
- 2007
Medium:
- Multi-panel collage of digitized photos, texts, and geometry
Size:
- 17.0 inches x 45.25 inches
Category:
Artist Statement:
Linkages combines a topological exercise in dividing the picture plane with half and quarter circles with a play of geometric proportions and colors based on the Fibonacci series and the related Lucas series. Within the armature
of arcs and planes are embedded images from a variety of sources: the Visible Human project of the US National Institute of Health, images from the Hubble Space Telescope,
high-resolution images of earth from various NASA space flights, and digitized photographs by Alma de la Serra. Algorithmically produced texts add another layer. Fictitious artist Alma de la Serra, invented by the flesh-and-blood artist Paul Hertz, is a former high school math teacher turned photographer and a member of the Ignostudio, an artists’ cooperative home to three other fictitious artists: dysfunctional fortune-teller Juan Teodosio Pescador, also known as “Ignotus the Mage”; painter Darrell Luce; and digital media artist Paul Hertz. These fictitious artists
offer Hertz an opportunity to critique and parody the experiences of artists marketing their art and struggling to survive, and to develop “product lines” very different from his own. While de la Serra has not yet provided a full
explanation of her imagery, it is not out of place to suggest that she is looking for a way to engage social issues while placing her point of departure in a formal idiom. She states of her work: “My premises are simple: the world is deeper than our knowledge, and everything in it belongs to life. I have learned to understand this through number, measure, and reason, and to my astonishment have found that these tools, rightly understood, can speak to the breadth and depth of our experience.”
Technical Information:
Linkages consists of seven square modules that can fit together into any configuration, provided they are hung with the diagonals of the squares perpendicular to the floor. Images were digitized from analog film or obtained from public-domain sources on the internet. In Adobe Illustrator, topological divisions of a square by arcs were regulated by Fibonacci and Lucas series to create an armature for images. The armatures and images were combined with texts in Photoshop. Linkages was printed on a high-resolution inkjet printer with an archival inkset on archival paper.
