Articles + Reviews - SAM SEMORE
Review: Sam Semore
Moore, Claire. "Review: Sam Semore at Gorney Bravin & Lee." December 2001.
Sam Semore's current installation at Gorney Bravin & Lee picks up on the latest trend towards interdisciplinary media in the art world. Semore blurs the once rigid division between painting and photography in his appropriation of canvas as a ground for large-format digitally-manipulated photography.
The series of predominately black and white portraits on view are accented by fluorescent areas of color, applied in a gestural manner, that fill the negative space produced by the tight cropping of the subject's face. The relationship between the colored area of the canvas and the portion more readily identifiable as a photograph begins to dismantle the space. The color, due to its intensity, pulls itself to the foreground thereby flattening the illusionism created by the chiara scuro of the black and white image. The spatial relationship achieved moves the photograph into a dialog closely aligned with painting as issues of figure/ground and flatness/depth come to the forefront.
Although no paint is actually used, there is an undeniable tension created between the two mediums. In terms of size, the large format of the photographs (70"x 38") is a direct challenge to painting. A large part of paintings success is due to its capacity to take on monumental proportions as found in murals and the oversized canvases of the Abstract Expressionists. It is no wonder the current trend in photography is toward larger and larger prints when you consider the impact of a 16" x 20" versus its opposition.
In recent years photography has made its way into the mainstream current of the art world, in this context it is forced to compete not only with other photography, but painting, sculpture, installation, and video as well. Size becomes a crucial factor in an environment wrought with such fierce competition, a fact photographers such as Andreas Gursky and Thomas Struth have addressed head on. Although, bigger is not always better, large work has the advantage in terms of getting attention, good or bad.
In the end, Semore's work gives us a glimpse of what the future may hold as the barriers that once divided distinct disciplines give way to a more amorphous structure that allows for recombination and growth. Artists are increasingly distancing themselves from their former titles as painters, photographers, etc. in favor of the more general term art which provides infinite possibilities.