The Queens Museum of Art at Bulova Corporate Center
Anne Deleporte’s Einstein, Marx & Matisse is a series of works that the artist calls photo-frescos. Part collage, part painting, Deleporte’s work is created through a chance process of collecting newspapers late in the day, or long after the news is current. Each photo-fresco begins with one or more sections of the newspaper, more often than not from The New York Times; this group of paintings on view at Bulova is based on newspapers published between 2005 and 2013. Deleporte’s relationship to the news is different than yours or mine. She collects newspapers whenever she can, quickly checking for visual interest. From this news archive, she unfolds and pastes the newspapers onto wood, canvases, and in many cases, walls, ceilings and other architectural surfaces. She then locates images from the news that she wants to highlight by carefully painting around them, filling in the gaps between them with solid color, most often pale blue and, more recently, black.
As a viewer, you might be immediately drawn to certain details in each painting: a color wheel, Picasso’s portrait of Thérèse, the Mississippi River, sculptures by artists Richard Serra and Joel Shapiro, a crumbling loaf of bread, a swimmer cutting a long stroke, the right field pole at Fenway Park. It may look like the frescoes include more artistic imagery (references to da Vinci, a painter’s palette, and the aforementioned works by Picasso, Shapiro, and Serra) than non-art images. What do sections of corn on the cob, cheese fondue, a red robin, and a bull have to do with art? Which of these things is not like the other? In viewing, or rather reading, these artworks pictorially, an appreciation emerges for the artistry of print media: photography, drawing, typeface, and paintings captured within Deleporte’s paintings, rich with shadowed depth, suggest a three-dimensionality that makes the news all the more surreal. The background (or, in Deleporte’s case, the foreground) of the paper enlivens our collective reading of the news.
This is no doubt an artist’s filter of the newspaper. Images are privileged over words, suggesting a different kind of literacy. Deleporte’s selective reading creates a sense of order out of the glut of visual and textual matter we face daily, both awake and in dreams. The way in which Deleporte’s work summarizes the news, bringing together chance occurrences in print media, is integral to her art, while it also leaves the door open to the viewer’s subjective reading. If you happen to be an avid reader of the newspaper, you may feel familiar with what you’re seeing, the gestalt of past papers read. Or, specific symbols might trigger associations that have nothing to do with the artist’s intentions. In fact, three of the artworks on view – Matisse, Marx, & Einstein (all 2005) – are from the same day, and two of these works, Matisse and Marx, were made using duplicate copies of the same day’s newspaper, demonstrating the possibility for variations in casting these contemporary hieroglyphs. Even if we agree with Deleporte’s emphasis on these three historical figures for their symbolic value in art, political theory, and science, our individual understanding of the news and the world is distinctly subjective. Like the news itself, Deleporte’s paintings leave certain details to the imagination. How one image or detail relates to another is part of the experiment. The real mystery is what Deleporte chooses to cover up.
Sara Reisman
About the artist: Anne Deleporte lives and works in Long Island City, New York. She works in a variety of media—including painting, sculpture, drawing, video, and numerous projects of hers have taken shape as public installations. Deleporte is currently completing a mural for Highbridge Gardens in the Bronx, commissioned by New York City’s Percent for Art Program. Her large scale work has been presented in exhibitions at The Dallas Contemporary and Momenta Art in Brooklyn (both 2010), Museo do Paço Imperial and Galeria Laura Marsiaj in Rio de Janeiro (both 2009), and Prospect.1 New Orleans (2008). Deleporte has exhibited nationally and internationally at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, the Santa Monica Museum of Art, the Shanghai Art Museum, The Centre Georges Pompidou, and Musée d’Art Moderne.
The Queens Museum at Bulova Corporate Center
75-20 Astoria Boulevard
Jackson Heights, N.Y. 11370
718-446-0757
Bulova Corporate Center is sponsored by the Blumenfeld Development Group and LaGuardia Corporate Center Associates. Since 1990, the Queens Museum of Art has partnered with the Blumenfeld Development Group to energize the Bulova Corporate Center by presenting arts exhibitions and projects.
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