Suspended

In this century, first print and then electronic news media have contributed directly to the sensationalization and spectacularization of natural and human disasters. A media-hungry society has become a society of ambulance chasers simultaneously attracted to and repelled by cataclysm. It is this highly charged and liminal zone, between mediated disaster and personal emotional loss, that Lorna Simpson invites the viewer to explore in her installation, Suspended. Simpson's installation is set up on a horizontal axis, with eighteen photo-transfer prints mounted on one wall. On the opposite wall is a single piece of felt, bearing printed phrases, including "Falling from the air," "An explosion," "The suicide of two sisters," "The pursuit of fugitive slaves," and "Three artists are taken by the sea." Two magnets are suspended from the ceiling truss by a length of monofilament line, in front of this text-laden print. These book-sized magnets seem to float in space, perpendicular to one another, separated by their electromagnetic properties. For the photo-transfers (also printed on felt), Simpson turned to the tabloid press of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century for images of disaster. From this removed historical perspective, she interrogates an aspect of the modernist paradigm, which identified the current era as one of increased personal alienation and emotional isolation. A viewer, drawn to traverse the space, stops to read the text then returns to inspect the images, looking for a correspondence. In some cases a match may be readily apparent, in others it is not so obvious, if present at all. The desire to more fully understand the story behind each event is piqued, but left unsated; scenarios must be constructed that relate the images and the texts. This subtle manipulation heightens the awareness of dependence on, and attraction to, media representations of events; complicity in the spectacularization of disaster.
Text written by Curator Bruce W. Ferguson and Vincent J. Varga for the exhibition catalog.