Art Metropole

#10492

Growths

Artist

Felix Kalmenson

Date

2013

Publisher

self published

Format

Artists' Books

Details

Softcover

Size

21.5 × 25.5 × 0.9 cm

Length

0 

Growths is the result of several months of breeding mold on 35mm motion picture film of Hollywood trailers from the past decade, using natural processes of decay to rot the emulsion of found footage. The result is part pseudo-scientific investigation of mold patterns and behaviors, part iridescent abstraction and disintegration of known images. These investigations are presented through four mediums of projection; as a moving picture, individual slide, light box, and illuminated fabric installation. Growths operates in what is now a long established practice of destroying film, such as in the works of Stan Brakhage and Luther Price, however, the process of destruction is implemented by a growth, a creation. The found image is reshaped by the movement of the fungus and it becomes a footprint of its growth, a document of life. These imprints are then scanned at a 12,000 DPI resolution, using the scanner as a microscope to capture the minute abstractions of this living organism paused in colour and then presented through various forms of illumination and representation. The use of slides and lightboxes references the tools of scientific investigation with the 9’ lightbox constructed of four medical lightboxes.