FIGURES I – IV

Figures I – IV is a series of collage using layers of gauze fabric over digital prints of images taken from everyday news media. These appropriated images depict various gestures of touch, which are made ambiguous by cropping and removing the figures from their original contexts. Devoid of events and narratives, we encounter these ghostly figures as abstract bodies, suspended and staged out of time. The overlaying gauze further enhances this sense of distancing, forming a veil that masks the images on one hand, while simultaneously charging their latent surface with material affect. In all the images, the gaze is either averted or consciously obscured. The absence of direct address not only emphasizes the interplay of visual and haptic forms, but also draws attention to the constant slippage between figure and ground, image and object.