MARIA HEDLUND.FABIA CALVASINA ARTE CONTEMPORANEA In her first solo exhibition in Italy, Swedish artist Maria Hedlund presented four large photographs (all untitled, 1998) and one with much smaller dimensions (Meditations, 1999), all dealing with the same subject: men's shirts seen from the back, photographed with a zoom lens that framed just the shoulder area and part of the sleeves. The fabric of the garments is always striped or checked, typical of traditional menswear mens·wear also men's wear n. Clothing for men. menswear Noun clothing for men menswear n → confección f de caballero and offering a minimal degree of decoration. The shirts' textures are elaborate but extremely minute, and the nuances of their colors sober and tonally harmonious. What makes these banal disclosures interesting is their presentation at an unusual scale and from behind. The folds that the fabric casually assumes give the images a certain sense of plastic emphasis, accentuated by the large dimensions and by the close-up viewpoint, which, at first, prevents the eye from recognizing these richly drawn surfaces as simple shirts. (But the same observation holds for the very small photograph, the dimensions of which are equally removed from reality.) The person who "inhabits" these garments is not present, nor are there any traces of his organic existence. By contrast, "Hemma hos mig" (At my home), 1997, another series of photographic works by Hedlund (recently seen in "Quotidiana," a group exhibition at the Castello di Rivoli in Turin), focuses on just such traces, in images of kitchens and bathrooms whose absolute whiteness has been contaminated contaminated, v 1. made radioactive by the addition of small quantities of radioactive material. 2. made contaminated by adding infective or radiographic materials. 3. an infective surface or object. by small traces of dirt that the artist mercilessly places in the foreground foreground - (Unix) On a time-sharing system, a task executing in foreground is one able to accept input from and return output to the user in contrast to one running in the background. . But the shirts remain untouched and perfectly clean. It seems that Hedlund's work is typically based on updating references to pictorial traditions both modern and ancient. In the white of "At my home" one can read an allusion al·lu·sion n. 1. The act of alluding; indirect reference: Without naming names, the candidate criticized the national leaders by allusion. 2. to monochrome painting Monochrome painting is sometimes seen as meditative art. Throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century painters have created monochromatic painting. The exploration of one color, the examination of values changing across a surface, the expressivity of texture and . The attention that the artist pays to the sculptural and tonal values of the shirts' folds naturally recalls classical painting and the volumetric volumetric /vol·u·met·ric/ (vol?u-met´rik) pertaining to or accompanied by measurement in volumes. vol·u·met·ric adj. Of or relating to measurement by volume. prominence given to the draperies worn by saints and Madonnas. And yet if the eye follows the pattern of the folds of her large shirts, the complex play of textures gives rise to little glitches Little Glitches are a four piece folk/indie band from Sheffield, UK. The band formed in 2004 after collaborating and writing together in previous bands. The band consists of Andrew Bolam (bass guitar), Gavin Scrumpy (drums), Iain Stewart (acoustic guitars), and Sam Smith (Rhodes that can take on effects of almost blinding intensity, as if the products of an unconscious Op aesthetic. Dictated by chance, these effects are regenerated, as in |
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