Placement (Two Moons) 2007, 14x20.5", Julianne Swartz, 2007
Julianne Swartz’s work in Placement is a series of photographs showing a hand holding a mirror that reflects the opposite horizon of which the viewer is facing. She does not comment very specifically about this piece (or any of her photographic work, for that matter.) An article I found by Mixed Greens, an online gallery, gives some insight as to how Swartz operates as an artist and the surface themes of her work. Flatly, she creates work where the extraordinary can co-exist with the mundane. She enjoys the juxtaposition of opposing ideas such as mysterious vs. apparent or beautiful and banal (MG). Swartz “takes photographs to capture that experience within a daily context.” She continues stating that she waits for the instant when the light in its shifting form allows the ordinary to become the remarkable (MG). What I enjoy about the work in Placement, and Swartz’s other work, is that she finds a method to materialize intangible elements such as light, sound, and/or air into atmospheric substances that one could experience physically—substances that you could hold in your hand.
I find her work in Placement as disruptive, yet enlightening. Conceptually, the obvious would be that hand and mirror are disrupting the audiences’ immediate view. While doing so, the viewer is interested in what is being reflected by the mirror and its displacement within the image. As a whole, the mirror acts as some sort of portal; perhaps a reminder of the past or a glimpse of the future, the blurred and silhouetted hands serving as the synaptic gaps between the past and future (the present space and the space represented in the mirror). I suppose one could relate it to the black matter that exists in space. I find the stronger images are those that have a busier chromatic space reflected in the mirror, while the background of the immediate space is much less detailed and monotone. The idea presented here is that one could reach out and grab the space existing in the mirror, as the shape of the mirror is not precisely defined; the image within the mirror forms to however the hand is holding it. I almost feel like the space being reflected could exist and manifest itself within the subject. This reminds me of a beautiful quote I once read: “I am a part of the Universe, and the Universe is a part of me.” Her work in Placement transcends that of existing space and gives rise to questions relating to the experience of intangible elements. It questions our ability to grasp and understand these elements simply by displacing a space within another in a form it is not commonly observed.
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