Embarrassing books, Penelope Umbrico
Doors, Penelope Umbrico
Penelope Umbrico is an artist that will be coming to VCU tomorrow but i will not be able to see her speak so i looked at her work on my own. Umbrico attended Ontario College of Art and School of the Visual Art in New York.
I admire her work because it is visually interesting, but there is a reason for every choice she makes in her pieces. The message behind the images are not always clear to the audience but the formal aspects of compositions will keep the viewer engaging with the piece.
Most of her work on her website is based on, what i would call, an idea of repetition. She finds images on the internet or in catalogs, details of images that people rarely pay attention to and brings them to the foreground.
In the first image there is bookshelves with the books turned backwards. All of these images are taken from catalogs. She is making the point that it is just silly to have books on a self with the spines not showing, you cannot see the books. She also says that of a person actually put their books like that that they must be ashamed of the book's content. She brings these "embarrassing" books to the forefront of people's attention and begs the question, "Why are these books backwards?" It really presents an odd thing for the viewer.
The second image is the views out of doors that are just opened a little bit. She wants to show the viewer the perfect suburban neighborhoods that are portrayed in catalogs. She takes the images from the catalog and enlarges it to match the scale of the door being advertised in the catalog.
I think that the way she has reasons for everything in her images is great. I think that the mystery behind them at first glance is a positive thing for this work because it seems this kind of work can be too straightforward very easily.
This work, and her process behind them seems a lot like the work that i am working on and i am disappointed that i will not make it to the lecture tomorrow.
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