Nora See

Countermonument

2014

“Good artists borrow. Great artists steal.” A quote oft attributed to various sources that was never actually uttered by any of them. Though Mark Twain elaborated on the sentiment: “Ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms.” In the Framed Series, I use my 1% contribution to combine issues of consumption with my autobiography. I paint copies of copies of paintings within paintings to reference the appropriation, commodification, and altered continuum of art. My paintings of paintings are based on photographs of originals to perpetuate the continual distillation of form, given the ease with which images are presently exchanged and modified. Further, by reducing historically significant paintings to framed objects hanging on walls, I augment art as a commodity and reconcile the conflict between the artificially assigned monetary value of artworks with the reality that they are simply swirls of paint. In this way, I am also acknowledging the literality of my own work. I have also altered each copied painting to personalize the context of the pieces and address specific autobiographical ideas. These ideas relate to a range of both recent and distant experiences, both funny and sad. Although my initial renderings are digital image composites, my medium of choice is oil paint, applied in transparent layers, using the image on the computer screen as a reference. In addition to its lush visual properties, I enjoy the flexibility of oil paint in making acute renderings as well as the evolution of the imagery from paint to digital and back to paint in further protracting both the distillation and evolution of form. statement on piece "The character Jame Gumb, from the 1991 film and 1988 book, The Silence of the Lambs...

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