WILLIAM ANASTASI – CONTINUUM
2015-11-30Continuum represents a seminal installation in the history of photography. The site specific installation lays out the coordinates of temporal impermanence and the immaterial, phenomenological basis of experience. Anastasi explores these issues by rendering problematic the photograph as instrument of knowledge and objectification.
Hung upon each wall of a space, a series of twelve photographs show the space directly behind the viewer as he or she looks at the photograph. Each wall reflects the one opposite it; since each photograph was mounted before the next one was taken, the early ones show a blank wall opposite them; the later ones show on opposing wall with a photograph of the first wall already hung on it. Anastasi metaphorically engages the reflective properties of mirroring by photographically inverting the space, placing the area behind the viewer in front of him. The viewer entering the gallery space and looking behind himself sees the same thing as in front of him. Thomas McEvelly a close friend and Anastasi’s devoted art critic, described Continuum as an “infinite regress”, somewhat like two mirrors facing each other, a space of silence in which the viewer is rendered invisible or immaterial or transparent.
Opposite – Continuum, 1968
Exhibition runs through to January 9th, 2016
Galerie Jocelyn Wolff
78, rue Julien-Lacroix
75020 Paris
France
