Laurence M. Gartel: Dual Personality
Artist(s):
Title:
- Dual Personality
Exhibition:
Creation Year:
- 1979
Medium:
- Cibachrome Print
Size:
- 16" x 20"
Category:
Artist Statement:
At first, I created works using a proprietary system at the Media Study/Buffalo Center in Buffalo, New York in the middle to late 1970s. Experimentation on the system was as much of a challenge as creating aesthetic images. “Media and message” were hard to combine.
Dual Personality (1979) posed the question of positive and negative, fusing two images from different angles. Color, too, had to be “stripped” in by use of a colorizer unit called the Paik-Abe Colorizer. The input devices only allowed black-and-white input using big television cameras and one-inch reel-to-reel video tape. The resultant image had to be photographed directly off the monitor, as there was no other way to capture the image to print it.
Recent work continues to be auto-biographical. I create collages, as I am telling stories with my work. These are little vignettes of life. I always take my own photographs and include people who I come in contact with as well as the architecture and culture from the region. Now that the technology is no longer a “wrestling process;’ it is much more content-oriented. The final image is then printed digitally direct onto watercolor paper at 40 inches x 50 inches.
Millennium Girl, for example, is about my recent travels to Italy, the Italian people, and their history. The “Millennium Girl” herself stands to represent all women of the future, their power and their strength. All great works of art should represent their time, and I hope this work gives future viewers a window of our communicative age at the commencement of the 21st century.
