June 20 - July 3, 2002
 
Sue Gollifer
UK
Cynthia Beth Rubin
U.S.A.
"Two wired women"
Solo exhibition of digital prints
 
"Renewal of prints through new technology continues to motivate my work." 
Sue Gollifer 
 
List of Exhibitions 
 
"My work has developed in the last twenty years according to a rigorous programme of formal experiment, through which sets of relationships evolved between shapes, colours and tones. At first these relationships were concerned only with the surface of the work: illusions of depth or movement were made explicit as illusions, by using a systematic grid arrangement, and maintaining the symmetry of the overall design. Later, perspective was incorporated into the work, so that the arrangement could be read as a depiction of a space with depth, although never as a 'scene ': the space depicted exists solely in the work. 
More recent prints are designed to raise questions about the surface itself. The prints are made of paper, coloured. If anything is represented on them it is coloured paper, with folds, angles and creases suggested, but at the same time contradicted by the arrangement of colours, lines, and tones. The intention, as always, is to provide an arena in which the eye can be stimulated and pleased, while the mind can exercise its right to pursue or to reject the illusions offered or withheld. 
Each print is of course a complete image, but when viewed in groups, or as a series, the prints can be seen as stages in a continuously process of transformation, from point to point, constantly polymorphic process, whose identity is maintained by my preference of tonal, chromatic and formal combinations. Although much of my work is still concerned with the traditional media of printmaking, I have become increasingly involved with new reprographic technology, using computer-generated imagery and innovative reproductive techniques, such as laser-based scanning and printing. These assist me to discover creative and surprising solutions to problems. The memory and speed and the vast network of options allow new thought processes to be explored and discarded painlessly as the ideas take shape, develop and germinate.  
One attraction of this new technology, of course, is the convenience: calculations which once occupied hours, and involved painstaking measurement with ruler and compass can be completed with greater accuracy in seconds, leaving more time for the purely human judgments which remain fundamental to art. Another, as I have suggested above, is the possibility of creative error: a step taken with uncertainty can result in chaos, in which case it can be quickly unmade; or, more rarely, it can produce or suggest an order unforeseen in its complexity. In these cases the device is incorporated into the repertoire of available options, and the process of refinement and discovery continues. 
Perhaps even more significant is the possibility offered of detaching the images, or the relationships which determine the images, from their material base. Although ultimately all experience of art derives from the perceptions of artist or viewer in the context of material sensations, computer technology enables the sources of these sensations to be temporarily encoded as streams of digits. In this form they can be modified in scale, directed into a wide range of printing or reproductive media, or almost instantly transmitted over vast distances. In these ways, the specific material form of the image can be made less obsessive. The transaction between artist and viewer becomes less that of a negotiable object, more that of a dialogue about perception. When I started to make prints, I was motivated by precisely that possibility: its renewal through new technology continues to motivate my work." 
 
"I found myself increasingly in tune with the echoes of the past."
Cynthia Beth Rabin 
List of Exhibitions 

"My work is an investigation of the threads of cultural memory which I feel both from my own visual experiences, and through that mysterious transmission of sensibility which comes from some place beyond the individual. I am interested in how cultural traditions collide and merge, and how this is embedded in all of us. New technology has expanded my visual vocabulary, and all of my work, both video and still imagery, is now produced through the computer. These images grow from the affinity between my life as a contemporary American, and what I regard as my heritage, extending to times, places, and philosophies far from my own experience. Although much of my work focuses on Eastern European Jewish culture, many other cultural legacies have touched my work as well. 
Echoing the ambiguity of memory, the computer is the instrument for allowing some images to sing, some to come forward as clear images, others to fall back into barely representational dreams of textures and colors. The inter-weaving of image fragments within the computer renders the texture of the memories, and creates a narrative out of final composition, even when it is rendered as a fixed two-dimensional print. 
As a younger artist, I believed in the power of formal visual language to communicate. Under the influence of American Abstract Expressionism, I wanted to believe that the play of color against texture could reveal thoughts and feelings. It was the search for a formal structure to contain my expressionist gestures that led me to investigate Hebrew manuscripts as a structural model, after years of looking to Persian manuscripts and other less common sources. 
The illusion that Hebrew manuscripts would be just another influencing model vaporized the first time that I actually held a 500 year old manuscript in my hands. When I first traveled through Europe looking at these works from my own tradition, I experienced an emotional connection that was completely unanticipated. Others may feel this when they view Renaissance art, but for me the sensation that art and creative works can link us to the lives and thoughts of those that went before us was completely new and overwhelming. Since then, my work has come to focus on communicating this sense of connection with the past and the present. 
My introduction to digital media came early, before the age of easy and effective scanning, but as soon as scanning was readily available I incorporated it into my imagery. Because of the strong use of architectural motifs in many Hebrew manuscripts, this led me naturally to move my imagery into references to specific places. As I traveled to photograph sites for my work, seeking places that spoke to timeless links through generations, I found myself increasingly in tune with the echoes of the past. This is the spiritual side of my work, and the search to go beyond my own moment in time has become the driving force in my work." 
 
 
  

 
 
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