Elizabeth Mead

Lives and works in Williamsburg, VA, USA

Artist statement

Fictional Reality: The Photograph and Its Object Paper and string are modest materials. They are temporal. These are simple, innocent moments where the sober gesture of a fold or bend can evoke the fullness of a body part or create an architectural space for us to fall into. The way light reflects along the edge of the paper sets a line moving in space while the sweep of the plane absorbs the light’s warmth, which models its exterior and transmits a warmer light into its surface, so that the interior glows. A slight glisten from the Tyvek bound to the inside surface shifts the state of exterior to interior, reminding us of an inside and an outside. Loops and ends of string perform gestures, pulling the paper taught, dangling at its side. A subtle difference, a materiality that allows for containment on the one hand and quiet assertion on the other. All the while the fact that this is mere paper and string never quite escapes our mind, creating a tension between, on one hand, what simply is, these modest materials, and the thing or space we enter, on the other. It is important that the light in the photograph not be artificial. The only light source is my studio window. The object and the photograph are instantly and clearly recognizable as in and of the world we share while at the same time bodying forth one that is fictional. Important too is that the digital image is not cropped. Framing the object within the moment the image is shot ties the fictional space of the...

Artwork