Bobbi Woods
Warm for Your Form
May 25–July 15, 2012
To which surface of the eyes do lips compare? If two gazes look into each other's eyes, can one then say that they are touching? Are they coming into contact--the one with the other? What is contact if it always intervenes between x and x? A hidden, sealed, concealed, signed, squeezed, compressed, and repressed interruption? Or the continual interruption of an interruption, the negating upheaval of the interval, the death of between? If two gazes come into contact, the one with the other, the question will always be whether they are stroking or striking each other--and where the difference would lie.
–Jacques Derrida
In Warm For Your Form, Woods works in modified posters and video, sourcing the ready-made imagery crowding our collective consciousness. The imagery imbedded in Hollywood’s visual strategies form the material basis of her conceptually complex work. Through an environment of repetition, in which the viewer is able to move easily between correlative works, Woods creates an experience predicated upon visual pleasure, desire, and obfuscation. In much of her work, Woods partially obscures words and images, covering them with enamel, sometimes entirely blacking out any recognizable visual information.
In the series Warm For Your Form, a layer of reflective chrome paint simultaneously obscures much of the visual information within each poster while intentionally exposing remnants of the artist’s hand by way of the fingerprints and smudges left behind. Unlike the smooth, unbroken enamel surfaces in prior works, these new surfaces are unfettered, in areas thin and striated; the reflective effect stopped short. Employing this unburdened approach to the modified posters parallels Woods’ approach to her video works.
Warm for Your Form
May 25–July 15, 2012
To which surface of the eyes do lips compare? If two gazes look into each other's eyes, can one then say that they are touching? Are they coming into contact--the one with the other? What is contact if it always intervenes between x and x? A hidden, sealed, concealed, signed, squeezed, compressed, and repressed interruption? Or the continual interruption of an interruption, the negating upheaval of the interval, the death of between? If two gazes come into contact, the one with the other, the question will always be whether they are stroking or striking each other--and where the difference would lie.
–Jacques Derrida
In Warm For Your Form, Woods works in modified posters and video, sourcing the ready-made imagery crowding our collective consciousness. The imagery imbedded in Hollywood’s visual strategies form the material basis of her conceptually complex work. Through an environment of repetition, in which the viewer is able to move easily between correlative works, Woods creates an experience predicated upon visual pleasure, desire, and obfuscation. In much of her work, Woods partially obscures words and images, covering them with enamel, sometimes entirely blacking out any recognizable visual information.
In the series Warm For Your Form, a layer of reflective chrome paint simultaneously obscures much of the visual information within each poster while intentionally exposing remnants of the artist’s hand by way of the fingerprints and smudges left behind. Unlike the smooth, unbroken enamel surfaces in prior works, these new surfaces are unfettered, in areas thin and striated; the reflective effect stopped short. Employing this unburdened approach to the modified posters parallels Woods’ approach to her video works.