Thinking Pictures

An alternative art project where inner vision and stored emotions clash with poor data memory.

Do you recognise the artworks described here? This is a growing list of memories of wonderful artworks I once saw, but can no longer find out about. I have forgotten the name of the artist or the title of the work. Sometimes I can’t remember where I saw the art.

For all my notebooks, sketchbooks and ability to remember images, with these artworks, I am stuck. Memory lets go of data that I wish I could re-visit. It’s fascinating how the mind works. With films, I can remember the emotions while watching, but not the story. Bizarre how you can be so captivated by an experience, and then it fades…

This project is as much an exercise in memory as in trying to describe the unviewable. I’m collecting memories of memories…

I think I saw this show somewhere in Eastern Europe, around 2007-8. I think the artist was French. The works were large ‘paintings’ made of found street adverting, pulled off the original walls and displayed back to front, so you see the glued, torn and soiled side of the layers of paper. Some had text cut into the work. I think the artworks were mid 20th Century, but could have been from the 1970s or perhaps arte povera even. Beautifully subtle, with an irony about commerce and found objects. Does this description sound familiar?

I first saw these large (about 2 metres tall?) photographs of nightscapes in a gallery around London’s Mayfair, I reckon around 2001-2003? I somehow think it might have been a couple who worked together (or was that the gallery? It’s all so hazy…) or a woman artist. The photographs are not actual photographs, but rather rayographs made in forests at dusk, maybe exposing the paper underwater, and that created the ripples on the image? Certainly not digital.

Atmospherically, they were rich and sultry, and a little bit cold. Not quite black and white, but velvety. Very dark. The imagery was almost surreal because of the reflections in the water, and plants in it, of the night sky. They were displayed as they are, with no frame or glass.

I think then saw them again in an art fair in the Royal Academy, where Haunch of Venison now sits. Which fair was that, then? There’s so many… Possibly a photography fair, there were some Wolfgang Tillmans’ abstracts that intrigued me. It’s really interesting to try to remember. I have to write it down, in case I forget this much!

This giant bird was off Brick Lane, London, summer 2010.
A cute-but-gigantic rodent by the same artist appeared in Hackney. It’s huge work!

Admittedly, this is not ‘lost art’ in the same way the rest of this collection of faded memories is, it’s just that I don’t know who did it nor how to find out! Anybody know the artist? Say thanks to them!

Imagine covering the back wall of your lounge with photographic paper (in darkeness), and then opening the curtains to expose the paper. The whole room was used as a pinhole camera. Develop each piece of paper and reassemble the life-size collage. Fascinating process!

Voila, a giant picture of the opposite wall, showing big windows and the view outside. Incredible!! The time, the patience and the skill to do something like that are admirable. The result, as I remember it, was stunningly beautiful. I just can’t be sure if it was a Chinese artist, and I certainly can’t remember the name. Oh, umph… I think I saw them in an art book, not even live. Suggestions? Thanks!