Anna Ullrich: The Decorative Arts of the Mariner
Artist(s):
Title:
- The Decorative Arts of the Mariner
Exhibition:
Creation Year:
- 1996
Medium:
- Cibachrome print
Size:
- 35" X 77" X 1"
Category:
Keywords:
Artist Statement:
My body of work seduces. I scan objects such as fabric, newspaper, and rope to create folds, crevices, and hidden spaces. I literally create fabricated landscapes whose tactile imagery urges one to touch the surface of the print.
No image completely retains its original value or meaning after I’ve transformed it in montage. A newspaper article becomes a hilltop or a corn husk. A plastic cosmetic case becomes a wind turbine. A photograph of a nurse becomes a pirate ship’s soil. I am interested in how the viewer is able to follow these fantastic translations through allusions to familiar farms. The combination of real objects, photographs, and completely computer-generated imagery produces a hybridized landscape that is surreal in its incongruities and yet remains grounded because of references to the familiar.
My artwork expresses a desire for mastery and control over the male subject. Rather than being concerned with (re)gaining control over imagery of the female subject, I am fascinated with the cultural control inherent in creating imagery of the “other,” in my case, the masculine experience. I imbricate the sexual within the visual through fetishizing the inorganic and invest every object with a throbbing life vein. The subjects within my layered narratives are surrounded by a landscape and objects burgeoning with desire, threats, and anxiety.
I use Photoshop, for image manipulation, along with an object-oriented and vector-based program, RIO, for laying out my compositions within a PC. My visual sources have included traditional photography, appropriated and computer-generated imagery, and images of objects captured using a flat-bed scanner. This lost method, scanning objects on a flat-bed, has been very important in defining my visual style. My interest in using the flat-bed to capture the various perspectives of objects and to achieve a dramatic three-dimensional quality (due to the modeling effects created by the light source) has drawn me to three-dimensional modeling programs. I now use 3D Studio MAX to create three-dimensional objects and incorporate this imagery alongside my other visual sources. I am currently exploring the possibilities of creating a hybrid between my normal output method, inkjet and cibachrome prints, and a projected animation that appears within the static print.
