For the last month, we have been putting up a series of online “Viewing Rooms” to keep up some sort of presence and to show some of the work that would have been exhibited if the gallery had not been closed because of Covid. One of the advantages of these viewing rooms is the speed with which we can put things up and the ability to respond to work as it comes to us. So when Farrah Karapetian, a pioneering Los Angeles based photogram artist, who we have been showing for several years, Instagrammed a few new flower photograms, I asked if she could send me a selection. The j-pegs she sent were wonderful. A cross between the classical photo-based images of Anna Atkins and the dynamic action painting of Jackson Pollock, Karapetian’s flowers are unique works made from multiple layers and completed by the throwing and dripping of chemistry (developer/fixer/water) onto the color paper. Karapetian told me the work was about her need for beauty and relief.
Prior to last week we were only going to show these new photograms of flowers, but following the death of George Floyd, I thought of Karapetian’s 2018 series of inverted and upside down flags (a symbol of distress) along with her overlaid teleprompter texts and they seemed both prescient and timely. Since 2002, Karapetian has been exploring the boundaries of the photogram with works that are both personal and political ranging from the relationship of army veterans to the spaces they invade to abstracted still lives of musicians and musical instruments.
The texts in Karapetian’s flag pictures come from signs she has read at demonstrations: “When injustice becomes law resistance becomes duty”; “Keep your laws of my body”; and “Demilitarize the police”. Juxtaposing these phrases with the form of the teleprompter and American flag, the work begs the question: what if politicians shared the people’s voice? They also take back the flag as symbol which has largely been co-opted by the right wing of American politics and society and present it reimagined, re-contextualized, and restored.
While Karapetian’s processes are poetic and experimental, they derive from the world around us, whether healing forms from the natural world or demands from the people. As Karapetian said, “You can’t make this stuff up.”
James Danziger.
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