Swell
November 12 – 30, 1996
Exhibition
About the Program
Swell presented 360 projections of abstracted portraits by Fiona Bowie. Through the aesthetics arrangements of facial countenances, this work will attempt to cross temporal, spatial, and social boundaries inherent in formalities of traditional portraiture. The sculptural, omni direction projector used in this exhibition was designed, fabricated, and wired by the artist. It produces a bright, abstracted array that is scanned, inverted, and focused by external lenses: sequentially revealing faces among her assembled crowd.In the 360º installation Swell, hundreds of portraits spanning the history of photography have been cropped of their original contexts and mounted upside down on a cylindrical projector. Rather contextualized in their original form (environments, accoutrements, etc.), they have been re-arranged according to facial expression. They are inverted and legibly focused by lenses that orbit the cylindrical projectors body, casting moving trajectories of small groups or vignettes that are perpetually revisited, looping repetitively around the space.
As the scanning lenses orbit and progress across the transparency's surface, they reveal populations of individuals who's facial expressions subtly shift through open mouthed gazes, then frowns, smirks, toothy grins and back to gazes, undoing the (original) portraits' establishment of social context and by extension social order and its suggested hierarchies. In this way, Swell attempts to equalize the playing field.
For example, through analogous countenances (left leaning smirks), a young girl (circa 1930) and a CEO (circa 1984), cross temporal and social boundaries to become unlikely comrades.
Rather than these individuals being easily examined by the viewer, the sea of faces in this population are made only fleetingly available to the viewer, thwarting the centuries old custom of encouraging the gaze and its reductive indexing or feigned 'knowing' of the subject.
In addition to designing and building the bespoke projector herself, Bowie made custom lenses by sandwiching pairs of glass lenses of various sizes, creating infinite focus, allowing the work to be installed in any sized space without having to adjust the focus on the projector.
Artist
Fiona BowieCurator
Glenn AlteenIdentifier
1996.1112 SWECollection
grunt gallery Programming ArchiveLocation
grunt gallery (second location)116-350 E. 2nd Ave, Vancouver, BC, Canada, V5T 4R8
Unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ/selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations
In copyright. For uses beyond Fair Dealing, research requests, corrections, takedown requests, or other inquiries, please contact grunt gallery: archives@grunt.ca