The Black Panels, 1984

84" x 210" installed;

photostats, colour photographs, plexiglas, and acrylic paint

Collection of The National Gallery of Canada.

This is a multi-part work which forms a triptych with two groups of two images placed on either side of a central cluster of images.

a) The central cluster is composed of a group of pleximounted photostats of stills from the 1959 film Les yeux sans visage by Georges Franju. It also contains photostats of two documentary photographs of plaster casts of facial features and two colour photographs of my eye and ear.

b) I have painted white acrylic brush marks on the plexiglas surfaces of this central cluster. These marks are copied from a 1982 self-portrait titled The Anti-graceful.

c) The images on either side of the central group are photostats of documentary photographs taken just after World War I. They are of a sculptor making a plaster mask to conceal the damaged face of a soldier before the invention of plastic surgery. The text below each of these four images is from a critical essay on the film Les yeux sans visage. The narrative of the film is that of a guilt-ridden surgeon who is trying to make a new face for his disfigured daughter.