Ege Kanar, Surface Studies, 2014, Installation
A photographic print is not only a representation matrix but a translucent item bound by its own material and temporal qualities. It is a hybrid object on the exteriors of which particles, marks, dents, residues, inscriptions, and latent content such as fingerprints collide and create a semantic tension. Understood as a mobile agent participating in a network of interactions such
as gazing, reading, writing, touching, folding, flipping, tearing, preserving, exchanging or discarding; the image-object constantly evolves, oscillating between presence and absence, transience and permanence, forgetting and remembrance. Treated as a multifaceted map of lingering traces, can this item be systematically read against itself? What can one learn from addresses, dates, signatures, cracks or stains? Is it possible to excavate and utilize concealed information preserved by the deteriorating surfaces in order to reanimate the image-object? Mimicking detective-like gestures and pseudo-scientific methods, this work sketches out a desire to recontextualize anonymous photographs by means of a parodic investigation. Further it aims to re-develop the photographs in order to understand or recreate the originatory conditions that surround these mysterious objects.