Apr 17, 2014 - Sale 2345

Sale 2345 - Lot 291A

Unsold
Estimate: $ 10,000 - $ 15,000
FONTCUBERTA, JOAN (1955- )
"Chine Fan" (from the "Palimpsest" series). Oversized mixed-media Chinese fan with a selenium-toned silver print photogram on a hand-painted paper surface, including pink flowers on branches and bold green leaves, and an elegant, finely detailed photogram, also with a flora and fauna motif. The overall size is 29 1/2x53 inches (74.9x134.6 cm.) and the paper component is 16 1/2 inches high (41.9 cm.); the wooden slats glued open (as originally conceptualized) and with two red ties on verso. 1989
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Additional Details

This piece is included in Fontcuberta's "Palimpsest" series, in which an image (a photograph) is layered on another existing picture (an illustration or a painting).

This unique, one-of-a-kind object features a photographic image known as a "photogram," a cameraless print which is made by placing an object onto a light-sensitized surface and exposing the sheet of paper to light. (Christian Schad, Man Ray, and Moholy-Nagy are known for their fine art photograms of the 1920's-30's.) Technically you cannot repeat the same result.

Fontucubera writes: "This object exemplifies my interest in how nature is represented. Here is a dialogue of graphic signs with different semiotic meanings: the index or track (the photogram) versus the symbol (the painting): in other words, nature vs. culture. It is also a way of producing a "Palimpsest" piece not out of conventional flat image but by doing an intervention in a recycled, already-existing object.

"Chine Fan" is reproduced (full-page) in the catalogue "Paper Gardens: Recent Work from Joan Fontcuberta" (The Art Institute of Chicago, 1990), p. 20, which was published in conjunction with the December 15th, 1990- March 3rd, 1991 exhibition.

The actual fan was purchased in Chinatown. Fontcuberta was "interested in its vernacular nature and how it witnesses popular culture."