02 julho 2012

Posterior Images, by João Wesley



Posterior Images

The inference intended by the above title - in the case of Patricia Gouvêa’s images - does more than justify itself, it is a substantiated statement. The accomplishment of a visual manifestation, made viable by the introduction of recent technological innovations[1], constitutes the poetic north of this artist. Patricia renders photography as her means to capture senses, the camera as the element of imprecise intermediation with the real, and the computer as her tool to dilute references.

It could be said that in approaching these images, one is made to understand that, ultimately, the large scale introduction of computerized photographic methods in the realm of flat configuration would result in the revisiting of the question about art that proceeded the well known modern period. The substantial increase of photographic images in current visual art expositions leads us to think of a certain return to the issue of representation. The proliferation of references linked to the world, the truth of the negative film contained in the photographic mechanism and its possible transmutations in the digital environment, when oriented to the image fidelity, lead to the idea of a new academic flowering. However, this remark is not applicable to Patricia Gouvêa’s work. Her images, although still portraying a connecting hint with the photographed motif, are transubstantiated in the technical imperfection (poor photography) as well as when interacting with the cybernetic world, thus transforming itself into something else, which is no longer the motif first ‘clicked’.

Her image is perfectly fresh, no longer real, but a specter. It is something developed not just from contemplation, but re-invented as a result of such aesthetic interference a posteriori, thus the ‘posterior’ to the experience that photographing allows. To this effect, there is also the contribution of the submission to the “eternal bars”, currently concealed in sequences of zeros and ones, the unique grammar of this new system of codes.

Apart from the rejection of accuracy[2], which is usually found in photography, it is apparent in the images of Patricia Gouvêa another strategy adopted by the artist to make explicit the interface between the feelings of stillness and movement. If one takes a snapshot as the fastening sedimentation of a fragment in the continuum, the introduction of the photographic image in the video graphic environment works as an escape route to the idea of inertia and death[3], which is implicit in the snapshot. Finally, Patricia offers an assemblage of visuals and resources that travel between two distinct means of expression. This is an alibi, a subterfuge used to state that hope is still possible, that each second of life beating is the desire to keep on living, that is, the “posterior images” remind us that love still exists.

João Wesley / June 2003

[1] If these images can be said or referred by something, it would be to millions of bites of electronic information mathematically added. The visual would be situated in a cybernetic and electromagnetic space, where the visual, abstract and linguistic elements coincide and are consumed, circulated and exchanged globally. Crary Jonathan in Techniques of the Observer.

[2] “The miracles of Photography”, an interface of the first plane’s massive scale, like the delicate background pattern ; the contrast in the perspective; color and form; the precise material finishing, forming subtle moments of the movement. , Alexander. Rodchenko Photografhy. Konemann, 1999

[3] The photograph … it determines the death of the referent, the past returned, a time gone and static…It indicates that underneath it life continues, that time flows and that the object captures and at the same time lets it escape. De Duve, Thierry. Essais Datés 1 - A pose e o instantâneo ou O paradoxo fotográfico.


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