CAMOFLEUR : Elissa Levy
February 06, 2004 — March 19, 2004
“ C a m o u f l e u r ”
digital collaging, sculpture and works on paper by Elissa Levy
Opening Reception 7 PM – 10 PM, Friday, February 6
Brooklyn Fire Proof, Inc. proudly presents “Camoufleur”, featuring digital collaging, sculpture and works on paper by Elissa Levy. Levy’s Camoufleur series includes a room installation of photographs of camouflage fabric that have been digitally collaged and “painted” to heighten their optical effects. The texture of the fabric is alternately included and omitted to bring the viewer in and out of the design and also to transform the images into a more ambiguous state. The amorphous forms that make up the original camouflage pattern are restructured into one that repeats itself symmetrically.
Camouflage evokes an apparent history of war, violence, hiding and deception. Military units comprised of artists entitled “camoufleurs” were the original designers of the camouflage pattern. The camouflage pattern was derived from forms in nature but also influenced by art movements like cubism and ongoing theories about visual perception. Nature and culture coexist in this genre of patterning. Yet reconfigured, camouflage evokes other histories while retaining it’s initial identity. This camoufleur series makes new references to traditional woven blankets, mandalas, kaleidoscopes, Rorschach tests, hallucinations and mirages.
In the felt cut-outs, Levy focuses on the man-made forms used in craft stencils. The mass-produced forms originally produced as children’s toys are only suggestive of innocence and naiveté, being created from an adult nostalgia of what childhood should be. Levy’s cut-out utilizes soldiers. Though impossible to remove their aggressive reference, especially in present circumstances, etc, they are apparently infantilized. Yet what is most noticeable about them is what is subtracted and abstracted. Their superficial relationship to the camouflage is obvious and for Levy, the cut-outs are akin to camouflage, and she chooses to use them as such.
Levy’s work involves inverting, manipulating and transforming pre-existing structures, objects and spaces with a desire to heighten awareness of them. The awareness is not simply of what the subjects are, but what they can be. This alternate reality could exist in the future, the past, or even in a false memory. Through handling or mishandling, Levy wishes to accentuate each object’s inherent duplicity and the multiple readings it offers.
Levy utilizes craft, architecture, patterning, the decorative arts and design because of the subtle and continuous influences they impose. She views the interplay between natural and cultural forms as an organic relationship that ultimately gives information about ourselves. “We are from nature and into culture, and as we cannot escape from either, I prefer to escape into both.”
As signifiers, both forms can encompass so much more; they speak more to our perceptions of them and how we have incorporated them into our everyday lives. This is why I have turned towards the decorative arts my own constructions, as it is what constantly surrounds us.
After Party at Royal Oak, at the corner or Richardson Street and Union Avenue.
Gallery Hours: Friday + Saturday 1 PM – 8 PM