Madge Gleeson: Endangered Species

Artist(s):

Madge Gleeson

Title:

Endangered Species

Exhibition:

SIGGRAPH 1997: Ongoings

Creation Year:

1995

Medium:

mixed media

Size:

48" X 48"

Artist Statement:

I am extremely interested in the role of new technology in shaping our cultural environment. The computer is both the means and indirectly the content of many of my pieces. If Dick and Jane are still out there, they would be quite shaken by the information society that we are creating. I struggle with the social issues raised by all of this but at the same time am fascinated by the new possibilities. As artists before us have been buffeted by fin de siècle psychology, we are certainly tasting the fin de millennium.

Most of these pieces involve a scanned object that has been enhanced and then greatly enlarged. Despite their hyperreal texture, the black and white fictionalizes them. Most are printed on mylar, which is transparent or frosted and then displayed over wood veneer, formica, aluminum foil, and other materials. Hardware is repurposed from the local scrap metal yard, and the framing material is custom made by a furnace contractor. There is on intended slurring of the real and artificial, of the digital and tactile.

In “Endangered Species,” real leaves are displayed in glassine envelopes, each sequentially bar coded. All of the plants are common-place, suggesting that everything is endangered.