Heidi Norton
Monday, 27 September 2010
Work from New-Age Still Lives.
“This indeterminate physicality with different physical planes–it is beautiful and confusing, everything starting and reversing.”– Robert Irwin
“New Age Still Life: Paint, Plants, Trash, and Formalism are studio constructs utilizing plexi and wood shelves, plants and other objects that are representational of my youth. They are things borrowed from my parent’s basement—animal horns, macramé, art, drum cymbals, old mirror, incense, candles—and represent a universal new age culture of the 60’s and 70’s. These works engage in a conversation between still life, photography, sculpture, and painting and are intended to stimulate an exchange that questions the ideals of Modernism, particularly notions of idyllic beauty.
The idea of simultaneously preserving and deconstructing idyllic beauty (represented by the plants and other organic objects) is accomplished through the application of paint to the objects. With Whitescape and Blackscape the still life is completely covered with paint and then photographed. The plants eventually grow out of the center and shed the acrylic paint digressing into the their natural forms, ie. Deconstructed (Rebirth). The paint encapsulates and preserves, but it also kills, forcing the plants to sit somewhere between life and death.” – Heidi Norton