Screen, 1986

38.5" x 143" installed

cibachromes, photostats, and Plexiglas

Collection of the National Gallery of Canada

This is a six-part work which consists of:

a) A photostat of a film still of a child/woman of ambiguous age, taken from the film Foolish Wives by Erich von Stroheim. She is seen from behind a scrim filter which distances her image and begins to break it up.

b) Two cibachrome photographs, one positioned on each side of the photostat of the film still. These photos are produced from found slide images of foliage seen through a screen, taken by Toronto artist Andy Patton.

c) A text from Marguerite Duras' novel, The Lover, split and partially repeated, one half of it placed over each of the cibachrome photographs and reprinted in red directly onto their surfaces.

d) Three narrow photostatic panels of the mechanically reproduced texture of fabric, one placed below each of the photographs and the photostated film still.