My work for this show explores one of the most persistent genres of visual culture, the portrait. Portraits embody seemingly contradictory impulses within a singular form, such as the individual versus the "type" and the subject versus the object. Portraits also have the tendency to encourage deeply irrational readings akin to phrenology and serve as subjective vehicles of projection for whoever happens to be viewing them. It is this potential for instability that I find fascinating.

I am interested in how the dynamic of interacting with an "art object" both envelops the viewer in what Michael Fried called "absorption" and/or provokes an awareness of "objecthood." In his essay "Art and Objecthood," he provided a provocative and compelling conceptual framework, which despite some debatable conclusions, is still useful for considering the dialogue between viewer and artifact. He used the term "objecthood" to describe art works (specifically minimal art) that made the viewer acutely aware of the separate physical reality between themselves and what they were looking at. He preferred work that was self-referential, hermetic, and resulted in the viewersÕ experiencing a sense of absorption where any distinction between subject /object would meld together in "presence." Due to the polemical nature of FriedÕs essay he presented these interactions as a mutually exclusive binary. I think it is more productive to explore how they might coexist and actually morph into their exact opposites during the process of viewing. As a genre, I think portraiture is well suited to exploring this because of its fundamentally engaging character.

I found myself thinking in these terms while recently looking at a series of self-portrait photographs by the German painter and photographer Wolfgang Schulz, known as Wols. In his lifetime he never exhibited them, left no titles or explanation, and was apparently drunk when he took them. The known details of his biography give only the barest hints concerning the circumstances of their creation. It is believed they were taken soon after his release from several internment camps in 1941, where he had developed a severe drinking problem. He would have been around 27 years old. Their subsequent resurrection from a shoebox full of negatives belonging to his surviving sister in the 1970Õs (long after his own death in 1952) has opened them, like much of his work, to rampant speculation and projection on the part of the viewer. This applies to both their internal narrative and relevance within a larger art-historical narrative.

In these photos Wols stares at the camera in various attitudes ranging from apparent despondency, to mild incoherence, and jovial drunkenness. He is "making faces" for the camera. When looking at these photos I found myself wondering what he was thinking and who the audience was. Was it the camera lens, himself, or some anonymous viewer of the future? They seemed to beg for a kind of empathetic response. I carefully studied his facial expression, the way a 19th century phrenologist might interpret a skull, and based on this and the snippets of his biography I knew, I formulated likely scenarios. However, I became acutely aware of the fact that I was making a lot of it up. How much of my interaction was a dialogue between the picture and myself, or a dialogue with myself via the picture? What was the relation between the external art "object" and my sense as in internal "subject?" Was this an experience of "objecthood," "absorption," or both?

As a result of this encounter I painted the series "Photograph/Mirror Hybrid Paintings (after a series of inebriated self-portraits by Wols)." These are a group of diptychs which explore the encounter of a generalized viewer with a portrait and specifically myself with these Wols portraits. The monochrome half is a direct copy of the photograph in question. By studying and copying it by hand, I "got to know" my subject. In other words, I explored the epistemological issues of acquiring or generating knowledge through the process of painting. The colour panel was painted directly from a mirror, while I attempted to replicate WolsÕ expression and experience his mood in doing so. I then painted his hair and mustache on my features to further confuse the issue of subject and object. The real subject of these paintings is the slippery process of encountering a portrait - and the nature of the dialogue that ensues.

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