In
the torsos Arnie achieves his goal of integrating expression and
the literal by employing four major formal strategies. First, the
prints are straight photographs. Control is exercised in the framing
of the image, in the directorial management of the sitters and their
environment, and in the fully tonal rendition of the printing. As
opposed to Arnie's early work in which the straight image is highly
manipulated, here the negatives are played back as unaltered facts.
Second,
the materials contained within the frame are held to an expressive
minimum. Arnie's strategy is to merely hint at the continuous fabric
of reality.
Third,
not only do the same formal principles underwrite each image, but
each image both alludes to all others and syntactically builds on
each other to form phrases which ultimately create, contain, and
amplify meaning. Each photograph in the torso series is both essentially
alike and fundamentally dissimilar. Each is created out of a drive
toward mechanical repetitiveness at the same time it is constructed
as the embodiment of a unique and singular gesture and moment in
time and vision.
The
serial nature of this work recalls the 60s minimalists who relied
on generative systems and relished the geometric interchangability
of materials. But behind Arnie's strategy lurks not the relentless
repetitiveness of the minimalists, but rather Gertrude Stein's much
more romantic accumulations nested within repetitions which organized
and interrelated simple clauses -- ordinary particles of thought
-- into extraordinary and mysterious structures:
Put
something down.
Put something down some day.
Put something down some day in.
Put something down some day in my.
In my hand.
In my hand right.
In my hand writing.
Put something down some day in my hand writing.
(From
Continuous Replay, published
by MIT
Press.)
More
on the exhibition:
Pearl
Pease
Amsterdam,
Binghamton, San Francisco
