Qiao Space Talk｜Matt Saunders

Secondly, I have chosen two similar metaphors for the titles of the two lectures this week. The first, “Neon in the Daylight,” is taken from a poem by American poet Frank O’Hara. “Neon in the daylight,” he writes, “is a great pleasure.” It is an irrational, excessive pleasure, the pleasure of meeting two things that do not belong to each other. Another metaphor is “diffusion. Water …… light …… color …… emotions. I am interested in things that cross boundaries. There may be a balance in my work, but it’s a fluid balance. Seeing the colors of neon and the colors of the environment mixed together …… I hope that at the end of the lecture, these meanings of what I’m saying will gradually become clear.

To get a sense of some of the key features of my recent work, we might want to look at this exhibition I had at the Tate in Liverpool in 2013.

What do we see?

First of all, these are photographs. But they look like paintings. They’re sized like paintings, and they’re presented like paintings.

They are basically images

But while we see a figurative image, we also see traces of “handiwork”.
For example, …… the marks of the painting, …… the process, …… the chance. The texture of painting and drawing ……

Here there is an interest in the self-representation of the material, but also the nature of the medium.
For example, although this is a photograph, it is more in the nature of ink pressed onto glass than an image taken by a lens.

My work is often continuous and in series. They are also created in a certain order.
They are also often presented in successive groups. I also want the viewer to experience them in sequence. I am interested in the relationship and space between images.

Although there are many recognizable images here, there are also abstract images to go with them.

There are also still images paired with moving images.

In this site view at the Tate Liverpool, you can see how video and photographs are juxtaposed rather than isolated from each other.
Here, the photographs are in black and white, but the video contains vibrant colors. The exhibition is arranged in such a way that the colors of the video are reflected in many of the still works. As you watch them, if the video changes, it will cause all the works to change – adding color or rhythm. There should be an inextricable relationship between them. The video brings the other photographs to life, and the photographs suggest the material and content of the video.

For now, I will quickly show four groups of works related to the Shanghai Oil Tank Project.

My first exhibition in New York in 2004 was all paintings.

I was interested at the time in a certain precarious balance between still images and time.
I thought about stylism and the moving image through stills and artifice.

I used a lot of film material and painted with oil on both sides of mylar. I wanted to find a screen-like support structure …… a surface embedded in the image.

One that is visually harmonious, but complex, even disconnected as an object. Here, for example, the two images are on two sides of plastic, locked together and separated from each other at the same time.

I then combined oil and silver ink to create a different relationship between the images and the surfaces.
In this silver cube there is a face. The more you light it and try to see it, the more it reflects and the less you see it. This face shows up in the dark or in a side view. I like to challenge our visual relationship with the image that is drawn.

Thus, the surface becomes its own vocabulary. Cold and stark, but also physical.

The same painting in different light. The camera can hardly record this perfectly.

In this very early work, we can already see an ephemeral, time-based painting, and images that are really embedded in and embodied through the material. These are all ideas about photography.

Black and White Photography:

My first black and white photography work was a project about a photographic archive. It was a very simple starting point. I collected images and I wanted to put them together to form an archive. I thought I could remake these negatives by hand.

A “negative painting” made on transparent plastic. It works the same way as a photo negative. You shine the light on it, and it develops a positive on the photographic paper.
(This is actually an old technique called “etching to modify a glass negative”)

I’m trying to figure out different portrait techniques
The passage of time as I developed the prints

The prints came out the same size as the paintings and were presented as a “fake” or ghostly portrait gallery.

I started using other materials, using real dimensions.
The paper raises different questions about the painting than the questions we ask as viewers.
(The main question: transparent or opaque?)

Here, for example, is a “negative” and the photograph it produces.
At the Renaissance Society of Chicago, I did an exhibition that explored this “space” between painting and photography.

From the almost clinically diagnostic
to attempts to zoom in on tiny drawn poses
to complex overlays
to the shining of light on canvas paintings. Here you can see strips of fabric and woven twine.

Here, the “negative” is a very thick canvas. The bursting time is three hours. During this time, tiny, invisible holes in the canvas also transmit light, causing these black, eroded marks. An unexpected result. Photography is pushed back into painting.

This series of works develops a discourse between painting and photography.

The meeting of two materials and two surfaces is captured as a fleeting moment in subtle details like focus.
I began to “paint” with developer, so that each image became truly unique. The action of painting these chemicals on quickly in the dark is more like a dance than a traditional painting.

The structure of these traditional materials ends up resembling pixels, which can be described as a distortion and weaving of images.

A very delicate piece of fabric forces the image to form a very different kind of space and atmosphere.

The beginning and end of the chemical process causes a change of color in an image that is supposed to be just black and white.

Initially, I explored the interaction between these mediums on black and white photographs, and then moved on to using color photo paper.
The basic process is the same, but the variables change.
In the color photography lab, there is no light whatsoever. I had to locate the image by touch …… to see the painting through the senses.

I became interested in naturalism. This interest developed into a series of works about nudes and bathers.

The physicality of the “negative” – an unpulled painting – influenced the image.
This work introduces accident and time.

Two works from the same “negative”.
Still images in motion and change.
Color = Light
I hand-painted the color filter on the enlarger, so now the color movement and the image are independent of each other.

This is a recent exhibition at the Marian Goodman Gallery in Paris, which led directly to the Shanghai Oil Can project. The work here is precisely about “diffusion” ……
Pure diffusion of light and color
A space diffused by light
Diffusion of emotions
Diffusion of space

A parallel practice of animated video, with a close dialogue between it and the photograph.
The animation becomes architectural.

An expression of the role of light on canvas.
Constructing architecture on these canvases and other screens.

Light passes through these canvases, as it does when developing a photograph.
Transcending boundaries, painting in space itself.
Or is penetrated by the light coming through the windows.
Or form a dialogue with it.