The following is a brief preview - the full content of this page is available to premium users only.
Click here to subscribe...
Over recent years Felicia Kan has combined paintings and photographs within exhibitions, bringing together two disciplines historically at odds with one another. This tension is not based altogether on a material difference but rather a philosophical one. The invention of photography led to a differentiation of roles, through which it was considered that photography was an extension of the mechanical, while painting was perceived as evidence of a creative and somewhat spiritual act. This philosophical difference between photography and painting is also reflected in Felicia Kan's selection of subjects. We can interpret a number of her works as landscapes, which is not to say that they depict landscapes, but instead draw our attention to the pictorial conventions used to represent landscapes. Kan's photographs, for instance, frequently document temporary phenomena such as cloud formations, colours of the sky or fields, while her drawings and paintings are more likely to suggest perspectival views through diagrams, horizon lines or subtle flows of substances. In other words, Kan's photographs appear as a precise documentation while her paintings and drawings reflect more esoteric qualities. Consequently, it is through the genre of the landscape that we are able to see the implicit differences between each discipline.
In Untitled (Sky, Star, Field, Cloud, Moon) (1993), for instance, five large cibachrome photographs were hung from the wall so that the bottom edges curled up in response to climatic conditions. The pictorial depth of the photographs lent them a life-like quality which was enhanced by their depiction of natural phenomena. All but one denoted different moods of the sky, which took the guises of vibrant azure blue, grey ominous clouds, the solitude of the moon and multitudinous jewel-like stars... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline