Fear, Daring, Hexed. Patricia Voulgaris
In the folds of minds and flesh an archenemy emerges. Planes of vexing paper and pounds of ached emotion light the locomotive of Patricia Voulgaris. She is the source of her own photography’s virulent creature. Intimate and unfamiliar the craft of her image is constant and mercurial. No mercy in that merriment. The body is forgiven; it is transformed and greater than original intent. Compounded in deep contrast the woman becomes a strangely biopic alien. Life form founded in a protuberant voluptuous narrative. The eloquence of trickery and thieves slumbers in the boundaries of possible connections and communication.
The space is of daring pursuit. The conflict of identity is pushed. Quality of things is important. Surfaces react. First layers seep in, seeking sounds in liminal volume. The process of Voulgaris’ making expands convalescence from perfection. Torn and irate, irrational and wonderful. What is desired is projected into the imagery. These creatures are of strength to those around it. The body expresses translations of reactions to things personal and declared. Complexity refined, refunded by impulse. In its simplicity the imagery begets its own clarity. Confounded reality.
Choose sight, outside of a group.
Lightning strikes of flash outfit these forms, laying wake to paling whites and precise blacks. They are a catastrophe, a cacophony, adorned and experimental—results variant in piquant hunger. Resounding newness and bric-a-brac components are somehow formulated in archaic language. Obfuscated, they are inescapably of the Earth. The camera is a cheated paradox of reality; that fact makes case in the hands of Voulgaris. It is wielded and those falsehoods become realities. Fidelity of the things humanness is questionable, but behind all faithfulness there is something deeper.
The self is not solid here. What can be seen is temporary. Overlapped, warren, plastique, quagmire. Emotive tissues, brute of metamorphosis, theories shrouded sympathetic. Spaces lacked near concentrated definition are of things and qualities deeper and downed, not face value. Polemic practice embroidered by imaginative poetic detritus. The common ground inside people is swelled by this imagery. Voulgaris is exonerated because she is no longer specific; that vessel is used to refine a uniqueness that is absurd in its universal fascination. Creatures are not defined by their specific likeness—only by their humility and ability for adaptation.
To see Efrem Zelony-Mindell’s words and Patricia Voulgaris’ work featured in print check out Rubber Factory Posters. For more of Patricia Voulgaris’ work click here.