PALIMPSEST
Sally
Curcio’s latest body of work “Palimpsest” combines iconic imagery
with op-art. The title,” Palimpsest” refers to a manuscript on which
an earlier text has been effaced and the vellum or parchment reused for
another text. When paper was
rare in medieval times, it was re-used in such a manner, but the former
text often was still discernable.
Curcio
takes this concept of inter-textuality and obscuration and plays with
figure-ground relationships in a topsy-turvy manner.
Selecting icons from our culture, in the mode of Warhol, Curcio
superimposes op-art images over them. She even dims the “ground”
iconic image in contrast to the brightly colored primary-colored
“op-figures.” Curcio’s
method demonstrates the power of these icons in our psyche as their
identity still shines through the attempted obscurations.
This experiment shows the icons to be at the same time monumental
and banal as they cannot be fully embraced or effaced.
They are somehow perfect silent mystical images in our mind and as
such they haunt us. The icons
amaze us and disturb us.
In
a time when icons are unashamedly appropriated for political or
advertising propaganda to authorize ideology or consumption, Curcio
appropriates and demotes icons in an act of literal iconoclasm.
She employs op-art imagery like a kind of graffiti. This demotion
is not without political import as the resulting figure-ground switch and
interaction produces surprising results.
One
work “Jack Johnson’s Fight” has the fighter dimly in the background
while a grid of white superposes the image like a cage.
The intersections of the grid dance with the optical illusion of
the colors black and white, appearing and disappearing in the interstices
suggesting the ephemeral existence of “color.”
Another work, “Susan B. Anthony” depicts the reformer in tones
of faint yellow like a dawning sun, her likeness the ground to a rain of
voting ballot chads covering her image.
In the collection of thirteen giclée archival digital works,
Curcio contrasts images of
The
playfulness and colorfulness of these pieces continue to demonstrate
Curcio’s strategy to explore what is marginalized and privileged with
beautiful and accessible images that appear quite innocent.
After the initial surface impression that seems so light, one is
plunged into her signature deep read of the forces that manufacture and
perpetuate cultural meaning, identity, and psychological oppression.
