Opening Saturday: 03. February 2007, 18 Uhr
Exhibition dates: 03.02. – 10.03.2007

 

We are pleased to present the new work by Stefana McClure in our exhibition TRANSFER | MANGA and FILMS on PAPER..

The art of Stefana McClure concentrates on language and its transformation by scripture. The exhibition shows the latest works of the artist on this subject matter on and by paper.

In her „Films On Paper“, McClure transferred in a time consuming manner all the subtitles of a film onto single sheets of coloured tracing paper. The artist started by copying all subtitles of a film and entered these on a computer. She selects the same typeface used in the film, placing the texts on each page in the same relationship as in the film projection. The prints reflect the subtitles without the corresponding images. The artist placed the prints in successive order on the tracing paper and copied all the sentenced onto it.
 
The result consists of a monochrome colour surface and two light bands at the bottom. The format of the tracing paper exactly matches the projection format (TV screen, portable DVD-Player etc.), the colour of the tracing paper indicates where the film originates. For the work “Ran” e.g. which is based the film of the same name by Kurosawa the colour red suggests Japan. The concentration of the subtitles by permanent layering leads to a complete deletion of information i.e. to complete illegibility.  There is no reference to the film for the viewer, only the names of the pieces are identical with the film titles. 

 

Language in a compressed written form and the transfer of information is also shown in McClure’s “Paper Balls”. For this piece the artist ripped an atlas, a copy of the French comic “Tintin” or Melville’s Moby dick into strips, glued these next to each other and rolled them up into a ball. The balls size is determined by the materials used. The surface of each paper ball shows text passages, letters and pictures which have lost the original order and therefore lost their meaning. The excess of information by concentration - as in “Films on Paper” - means that conventional methods of reading are not applicable and are replaced by new associations instead.

Stefana McClure, born in 1959 in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, studied in England and Japan. She lives in New York. Her works can be found in numerous public and private  collections.

Literature compares:
Subtitles on the foreignness of film. Introduction by Atom Egyoyan and Ian Balfour, Images by Stefana McClure. The MIT Press and Alphabet City Media Inc., 2004 Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England. Page 21 - 31.