Automatic Earth refers to what I see as a “blue print” that exists within nature; a plan within each organism to automatically generate a particular form or pattern that is then, inevitably flawed. I approach these broken patterns within the landscape as allegories for human emotional experience. It is where the pattern breaks that we are told something: a draught, a trauma, an interaction, the slash of a chainsaw…. a crack in the earth.
Spider webs and tree rings share a common shape, but one is fleeting and fragile while the other seems impenetrable and ancient. They grow and die on opposite timelines; the web exists for just one evening then is swallowed again by the spider who made it, while the tree grows for decades or centuries before it is cut down. The flaws in these pre-destined forms become a record of time and of labor and they tell the story of the life that made them.
I use simple materials – light-sensitive paper and handmade tools – to make outdoor photograms and “photographic rubbings”. Photographic rubbings are hand-embossed imprints of earth, concrete and cross-sections of trees that are then exposed to light and in some cases collaged together into fictional forms. This process evolved out of years of making photograms, often working on-location in the landscape, using the nighttime as my darkroom. The work itself has generated an unlikely prescription for both how to experience the landscape and how to create evidence of what I’ve felt there. Recording labor has become increasingly important in my work; both that of a spider slowly, weaving her web and of a woman on her hands and knees, rubbing the surface of the earth. Both gestures are a way of invisibly tending the world with our bodies.
Patience, time and physical labor are as crucial to the subject of these images as to the process by which they are made. This method of working feels simultaneously like reading braille, like praying and like gambling. Risk, faith, and touching something unknowable are all part of my practice. In working this way I urge my antiquated medium forward, challenging analog photographic materials to amplify what is felt, rather than to document what is seen.
Klea McKenna
Klea McKenna is a visual artist whose photograms are held in the collection of the SFMOMA. She lives and works in San Francisco, USA.
Klea McKenna, Automatic Earth
November 5, 2016 to January 7, 2017
Von Lintel Gallery
2685 S La Cienega Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90034
USA
