Stock Markets and Hemlines
Stock market and hemlines – an assemblage of art and social images. The suite of paintings suggests a graphic grid used by global stock markets to chart the fluctuations of values in commodity trading. The paintings are accompanied by a video projection that captures a time-based contextualization in which established associations and potential readings are layered to provoke an open field of signification. A pattern of adversity emerges as lines extend into maps and territories of consumption morph into bankrupt social definitions. The materials painting and video projections modify the interaction of the personal and the public. We can see the traces of human touch in close proximity to the clean slick graphic of floating term hedge funds, GDP and garage sales
A wandering yellow ‘hem’ line in the paintings disrupts a sharply defined representation of the graphs and provokes humor and meandering identification of boundaries. Several paintings have a black and white pallet that takes apart the grid and amounts with a slightly different feeling.
The paint suggests a direct almost spontaneous application which keeps the works hovering between abstraction and representation. I have repeated the basic image to bring space and quantity into the images- a pattern of adversity.
The video montage echoes this pattern or lack of form as it can also be seen. In the video, a red ball moves along the yellow line as words float by that call out bankruptcy, cash, fees, garage sale, bread and goats, and chickens. Against marks or traces for how we live. I want to quote how we have used grids to measure amounts wealth or lack of wealth is measured.
An open field of signification reflective of the social consequences of stock market activity. A pattern of adversity emerges as lines extend into maps, and territories of consumption morph into bankrupt social definitions.
A wandering yellow hemline, in sharp contrast to stereotypical interpretations, playfully traverses the severely defined grids, insinuating a more fluid potential that disrupts notions of certainty and questions how boundaries that distinguish order are formed and interpreted in the realm of the imagination.
Bio: Natalie Olanickis a Montreal-based artist and educator.
Special thanks to John Sheridan, Video Artist & Consultant.
