Project Statement: Description of the relationship between the formal elements and of the piece and its thematic content.
The reason why I chose to use two dimensional, black and white drawing as my replication method is because it allows me to successfully manipulate and distort objects and elements, as well as add a more illusionary aspect to the representation. In other words, drawing is one of the only compositions that combines illusionary space with flat space. However, in this particular piece, I have tried to use overlapping to create the illusion of depth (especially clear in the second frame I have devised) and, hence, give the animals displayed a more realistic and corporeal quality: which highly contrasts with the stillness and lifelessness of the unrealistic statuettes surrounding the first frame. This way, I can create a gap between the confining two dimensionality and flatness enclosed in the frame and real space and time: this way, breaking the viewers’ expectation of dimension and perspective.
Nevertheless, through the use of such particular aesthetic techniques in two separately drawn compositions, my main goal is to emphasize Jake Goldzweig’s highly different “frames” of mind as a young boy and as an adult. More specifically, this personalized replication of Jake’s item does not aim at exactly imitating the structural component of the original (although there are clear similarities in the formal features of Jake’s object and my own replica of it), but rather is a direct reference to the shift in the owner’s perception on caged animals. While as a child, he profoundly enjoyed observing animals lying on the other side of the fence, believing it to be a fun and humane activity, adulthood has made him regard the zoo as a form of humiliation for animals, forcing them to perform unnatural acts. Within my final piece, Jake’s two distinct responses to the position the zoo animals find themselves in can be visually extracted. While the frame on the right (see image above) echoes Jake’s impression of the animals “as free and full of life”, as he explains in his interview, the other, contrasting frame displayed on the left side of the photograph indicates how Jake now visualizes the cages surrounding the animals in the zoo of Chicago whenever he reaches out to the object: something which I have attempted to highlight by making the animals featured look somewhat bound to the surrounding photographic frame. In this manner,this project has allowed me to create a relationship between the visual play set forth my the replica, as well as the material used to conceive it, and the conceptual, contextual and emotional make up of Jake’s photograph. Similarly, the contrast put forward by my final representation highlights the holder’s perception of a “tedious” present compared to what has been a more amusing and vivid past: in my piece recalled by the extreme vitality found in the second frame whereby the animals are almost escaping the constrained space established by the illustrated frame, as well as the surface of the paper itself. This way, the animals gain a sense of existence and infiltrate the coeval moment and space of the viewer. With this in mind, we can further place this object on a much larger context, perceiving it as significant not only on a personal level, but also on a community level. That is to say, it can be perhaps seen as a representation of the educational, intellectual and emotional growth of individuals, through their daily experiences of life in an urban society: whereby the joy accompanied by ignorance and ingenuity are taken away by what Jake describes as “his unpleasant awareness of reality.”
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thelloydster