In Already
Made, the six works on view are drawn from three
distinct bodies of work made in the last decade. Reflecting
the unspoken language whispered between lovers, 2003's "Love
Letter"
series evokes the abstract gestures and glances privately shared in public. "The
Model Project," from 2008, investigates style, where every thing old is new
again, constantly reinventing what is modern. "Chronicles of Beauty," commissioned
in 2010 and installed in the Eventi Hotel, on 6th Avenue at West 30th St., compresses
time, questioning the meaning and canon of beauty by looking back 3000 years
to Greco-Roman sculpture and layering photographs with modern day elements.
"These works, by celebrated
artist Barbara Nessim, exemplify a contemporary approach
to image making in the computer age. The digital
era has opened the world's visual memory bank to
artists everywhere, permitting the creation of complex
composite icons of our contemporary world. The technique
of collage has acquired new relevance with this technology
and allows the use of elements extracted from their
original context to become "brushstrokes" in a new
and original concept. These pictures have many of
the characteristics of cubist art, with fractured
jumps in space as photographic non sequiturs abut one another
to become another reality... one given cogency by
the intent of the artist. Perhaps that is why these images
are so captivating and haunting... they make new archetypes
for our time by remixing the already recognized ones of
the past, much as our brains formulate new ideas using
pre-existing language. The future has arrived bringing
with it the richness of history."
L.L. Powers, Curator
