Installation view of New Work: Erin Shirreff, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, July 20–November 10, 2019. Photo: Katherine Du Tiel
The first time I got to know Erin Shirreff’s work was when watching one of her video works, Lake (2012). The motif within the artist’s process is always related to a creation of multi-layer echoes to the visual vocabulary in circulation. Shirreff usually starts with the original pictures of sculptures or natural landscapes, and makes her own renditions based solely on those images. The interpretation can be either a hand-made reproduction of the object from the picture with the purpose of being shot and printed out again, or the direct re-photographs of those images using intentionally distorting lighting techniques followed by digital editing to construct a seamless video sequence, just like Lake.
This exhibition named New Work at SFMOMA shows a selection of recent sculptures and photographic works by Shirreff. Although it has a small scale with showing only about 10 pieces, it took me much longer time than expected to go through. Like Shirreff mentioned by herself in the discussion with the curator Erin O’Toole: it has become a cliché to talk about the erosion of attention spans these days, but it does affect the experience of looking and seeing. And by creating moments for direct, prolonged encounters, Shirreff offers the audience a luxury to slow down, rethinking the assumptions they already made about what photography is, and what sculpture is.
Without a linearly clear starting point of the exhibition, the setting space generates an atmosphere of uniformity and interactions between not only the pieces themselves but also the audience and the works. The most eye-catching piece is the large-scale cast bronze sculpture produced relying on a magazine illustration of a mid-century sculpture called Maquette sitting in the center. When the viewer moves closer, the presented marks and light dents create a sense of participation since the property of the raw material is boldly translated into the final form of the installation.
In responding to the sculpture, the immersive experience is carried over to the surrounding pieces on the wall which are from the ongoing series called Figs. They are black-and-white photographs of sculptures Shirreff made from provisional materials like cardboard and foam core. One iconic trait is the center margin of the print. The folding line is like a magical ridge which provides the audience an intimate experience of viewing sculpture in catalogues, where one feels the texture of the paper, smells the scent of ink. Additionally, with the artificial lighting effect on the top of the space, the exhibition triggers the multi-dimensional views from the audience when walking around the pieces with the passage of time.
Just like cubist painting was trying to cram multiple perspectives of one object into one image, Shirreff is doing that within the contemporary, digital realm. The blurry boundary and the circular dialogue between images and objects in her work illuminatingly guide the audience to actively ponder the subject about the distinctions between pictorial and dimensional representation.
Bibliography
[1] https://www.sfmoma.org/read/in-conversation-with-erin-shirreff/
[2] https://art21.org/watch/new-york-close-up/erin-shirreff-takes-her-time/