 |
 |
 |
|
| Lesly Deschler
Canossi Artist Statement February 2005 Dust is one of those ubiquitous materials existent in our lives. A small piece of it in the darkroom bedevils the photographer. A smaller piece behind a contact lens renders the viewer blind until removed. Dust is tough material. Lesly Deschler Canossi makes it the stuff of her life and production. In 1917 when Duchamp hung a urinal for the Armory Show, the modernist academy recoiled. Not yet willing to embrace the belief that the artist could deem a non-traditional material Art. Rubber band forward eighty years or so, are microscopic images of dust, Art? Deschler Canossi believes so. The artist conceptualizes her photomicrographed images of found dust particles the real deal, the stuff of art. As great works of art erode and deteriorate they create particles and molecule, which we walk through, breathe, and know as dust. How much dust is needed to appreciate the molecules as a work of Art? Would all the molecules taken together be the work? Would just one? Is an image of such a molecule of dust an intimate look at the work of the master? Is the photograph Art? Would your appreciation of the photograph increase if you were told the dust is from the Mona Lisa? Or would you feel greater joy if the dust were from the Pieta? From this lowly substance the artist strives to provoke her viewer,
in perhaps the same manner as Duchamp. It’s Art. Or is it? |