Steve Briscoe
The Object is The Subject
The Salesman’s Samples, 1988-1991
The Object is The Subject
The Salesman’s Samples, 1988-1991
February 17 - March 25, 2023
Opening Reception: Sunday, February 19, 2023, 2-5pm
Opening Reception: Sunday, February 19, 2023, 2-5pm
Steve Briscoe , 1990, Salesman's Sample #47,
Photographic emulsion on linen and assemblage, 37" x 44" x 16" |
Transmission Gallery San Francisco is proud to present photographic/sculptural works by Steve Briscoe. In this exhibition we will be showing a selection of his Salesman’s Samples, a body of work from the late 1980s. Against the backdrop of a hot art market, artists were beginning to look at the presentation of art as the art itself. These works situate themselves in that milieu as a mashup of sculpture, photography, and even painting.
Working from the consumer detritus found at an Oakland “As-Is” yard, Briscoe assembled parts of lamps, planters, buckets, spheres, even a truck door and guitar, and photographed them in black and white. He then hand-printed a photographic image on a stretched canvas at 1:1 scale. The resulting photographs, flat, splotchy, even painterly, were paired with the original as a diptych, confronting the viewer with both versions for comparison. The eye goes back and forth. Which is “better?” What is gained or lost in the translation? There is a reference to portrait painting as well as still life. |
The state of photography at the time was decidedly analog. These large-scale prints were not easy to make, and Briscoe developed a specialized technique so that the images could be developed on the stretched canvas. There was also an interest in the photograph as object and alternative processes. Artists like the Starn twins were using the photography in more conceptual ways. F.64 was out the door, make way for Neo-expressionism, Appropriation and Semiotics!
Catalogs of the works on view as well as other bodies of work will be available at the gallery.
Also see work by Lynn Beldner in “Expeditions,” showing in a concurrent solo exhibition at Transmission San Francisco, February 17 through March 25, 2023.
Catalogs of the works on view as well as other bodies of work will be available at the gallery.
Also see work by Lynn Beldner in “Expeditions,” showing in a concurrent solo exhibition at Transmission San Francisco, February 17 through March 25, 2023.
Steve Briscoe Statement:
Artists photograph their work all the time. It is how most art is disseminated to the larger world. More people will interact with a photograph of an artwork than with the original. What are they missing? When an object is represented by its photograph, a lot is left to the imagination, other views must be filled in by the viewer, assumptions have to be made. What are we really seeing in a photograph?
In 1988, I began experimenting with a product called "Liquid Light," a photographic emulsion with the consistency of white glue. It is painted on a surface, then exposed and developed with standard black and white photo chemistry. I was trying to combine two art practices and found that making life-sized prints of found objects, and later sculptural assemblages, raised interesting questions about originality, representation and the ideal.
By presenting both a sculpted object and its photographic likeness in proximity, I was trying to ask the question, “Does the photograph equal the sculpture?” I started with unaltered objects but discovered that a found object has more baggage. The viewer brings their own history to it. In contrast, a sculpture is as new to the viewer as the canvas likeness and so the equation is, if not equal, at least more balanced. The photographic image, printed in this rougher, painterly way is also a constructed sculpture of sorts; its stretcher bar gives it a dimensionality and the brushy quality of the emulsion even references painting. My deliberate transformation of the documentary photograph by printing it in this way makes an equation of the comparison of the monument, the document and the sum of the parts.
The equation of these works is the sum of the inputs divided by the incongruity of the results. What is lost in the retelling? What is gained? Is one more original that the other? It is this equation that makes the eyes dart back and forth looking for likeness or disparity; failure in one, success in the other. It is not always a clear victory for either, but, like many things, the whole is greater than the sum.
Artists photograph their work all the time. It is how most art is disseminated to the larger world. More people will interact with a photograph of an artwork than with the original. What are they missing? When an object is represented by its photograph, a lot is left to the imagination, other views must be filled in by the viewer, assumptions have to be made. What are we really seeing in a photograph?
In 1988, I began experimenting with a product called "Liquid Light," a photographic emulsion with the consistency of white glue. It is painted on a surface, then exposed and developed with standard black and white photo chemistry. I was trying to combine two art practices and found that making life-sized prints of found objects, and later sculptural assemblages, raised interesting questions about originality, representation and the ideal.
By presenting both a sculpted object and its photographic likeness in proximity, I was trying to ask the question, “Does the photograph equal the sculpture?” I started with unaltered objects but discovered that a found object has more baggage. The viewer brings their own history to it. In contrast, a sculpture is as new to the viewer as the canvas likeness and so the equation is, if not equal, at least more balanced. The photographic image, printed in this rougher, painterly way is also a constructed sculpture of sorts; its stretcher bar gives it a dimensionality and the brushy quality of the emulsion even references painting. My deliberate transformation of the documentary photograph by printing it in this way makes an equation of the comparison of the monument, the document and the sum of the parts.
The equation of these works is the sum of the inputs divided by the incongruity of the results. What is lost in the retelling? What is gained? Is one more original that the other? It is this equation that makes the eyes dart back and forth looking for likeness or disparity; failure in one, success in the other. It is not always a clear victory for either, but, like many things, the whole is greater than the sum.
