Soliloquy II
Sam Taylor-Wood
Photo: Elodie Grethen | TBA21, 2019
Collection
C-print
206.9 x 256.8 x 4.5 cm overall (framed)
Part 1: 171.3 x 256.8 x 4.5 cm (framed)
Part 2: 35.6 x 256.8 x 4.5 cm (framed)
Sam Taylor-Wood's photographs and film installations depict human dramas and isolated emotional instances. In her Soliloquy series (1998-99), Taylor-Wood's cinematic sensibility is coupled with references to the history of painting. The photographs are structured like Renaissance altarpieces and predellas: a large-format portrait is paired with a panoramic image below. Captured in a personal moment of self-reflection, asleep, or daydreaming, the subjects are often depicted in poses borrowed from well-known paintings. The title of this series is derived from the name of the theatrical monologue during which an actor disrupts the narrative to directly address the audience with some commentary on the story. That state of deliberate disengagement is implied by the dual images comprising each work: the larger photo represents the conscious state of the subject, while the filmic tableau below provides a register of his subconscious fantasies. In Soliloquy II, the shirtless male figure, who, in the large image, is surrounded by dogs (in a pose reminiscent of a Thomas Gainsborough hunting portrait), appears seated with a dog in the corner of the bathhouse setting of the "predella." Reality invades fantasy when a dog's tail or the sleeping figure's hand crosses from the top image into the panel below, scale unchanged"”a grotesque intrusion into the imaginary realm.
*1967 in London, United Kingdom | Living and working in London, United Kingdom and Los Angeles, USA
206.9 x 256.8 x 4.5 cm overall (framed)
Part 1: 171.3 x 256.8 x 4.5 cm (framed)
Part 2: 35.6 x 256.8 x 4.5 cm (framed)
Sam Taylor-Wood's photographs and film installations depict human dramas and isolated emotional instances. In her Soliloquy series (1998-99), Taylor-Wood's cinematic sensibility is coupled with references to the history of painting. The photographs are structured like Renaissance altarpieces and predellas: a large-format portrait is paired with a panoramic image below. Captured in a personal moment of self-reflection, asleep, or daydreaming, the subjects are often depicted in poses borrowed from well-known paintings. The title of this series is derived from the name of the theatrical monologue during which an actor disrupts the narrative to directly address the audience with some commentary on the story. That state of deliberate disengagement is implied by the dual images comprising each work: the larger photo represents the conscious state of the subject, while the filmic tableau below provides a register of his subconscious fantasies. In Soliloquy II, the shirtless male figure, who, in the large image, is surrounded by dogs (in a pose reminiscent of a Thomas Gainsborough hunting portrait), appears seated with a dog in the corner of the bathhouse setting of the "predella." Reality invades fantasy when a dog's tail or the sleeping figure's hand crosses from the top image into the panel below, scale unchanged"”a grotesque intrusion into the imaginary realm.
*1967 in London, United Kingdom | Living and working in London, United Kingdom and Los Angeles, USA