August 8, 2024
Erika Vogt
Image Blockers
Overduin & Co.
June 29 - August 10, 2024
Erika Vogt
The first things viewers see upon entry to the gallery in Erika Vogt's exhibition Image Blockers could be interpreted as abstractions — large green and orange rectangles covered with with six black acrylic shapes. These are Vogt's Newspaper Drawings and they are comprised of fifteen front sections of the New York Times whose dates span the last few years. Newspaper Drawing: Lemons and Newspaper Drawing: Stars (all works 2024) are push-pinned on a large wall of the otherwise empty space. Each front page has been painted either green (Lemons) or orange (Stars), while the rest of the pages are untouched. The papers are casually secured to the wall so many of them droop to reveal the content inside. Pieces of black acrylic almost as large as a single newspaper page in the shape of a lemon or starburst cover parts of the headline pages. Though partially obscured, it is impossible not to scrutinize the words and images and reflect on the news of the days represented in relation to the present.
In another gallery are two loosely assembled wall sculptures. Image Blocker 5 and Image Blocker 6 are crafted from acrylic, linen, paper and thread and occupy either side of a passageway to the last room of the exhibition. Based on the shapes of ancient Cycladic terra cotta vessels, these soft flattened forms retain some three-dimensionality. Because they share the space with a projected video, they are not lit so their presence is ambiguous. On the opposite wall is a large video projection titled Book XII (Channel 1). This five minute loop with sound explores time. The central image is a large analogue wall clock set to 12:00. Although the second hand moves backwards, the time hardly changes. Digital clocks appear and disappear from the frame. Dressed in a lab coat, a woman (the artist) reads from a newspaper. Layered as if a filmic collage are sequences of the woman spinning the starburst shape from the newspaper drawings and holding up different objects toward the camera, further fragmenting the image. The video flip-flops from positive to negative in concert with a pulsating soundtrack that feels more like noise than any distinguishable sound.
Vogt's other videos also unabashedly indulge in the use of digital effects and the layering of imagery — be they newspapers, actual spirals or lemons (relating to the Newspaper Drawings or Image Blocker sculptures), or an image of the spinning globe. Lemon & Egg is presented on a small screen and is the most abstract of Vogt's video works. Here, a small lemon floats up and down in the frame that is otherwise filled by an organic spiral and a blown up EKG line originally made of thread. This imagery is often juxtaposed with the silhouette of an egg. Although obtuse, this digital video does connect to the static works on view.
Thinking about the title of the exhibition — Image Blockers — and the purposeful layering within the works, it seems as though Vogt is relating past and present, drawing from popular as well as art historical contexts (for example Hollis Frampton's 1969 film Lemon) calling attention to the ever changing world as well as its sameness — the repetition of words, of pictures of warring nations — and asking viewers to notice the spaces in between.
Image Blockers
Overduin & Co.
June 29 - August 10, 2024
Erika Vogt
The first things viewers see upon entry to the gallery in Erika Vogt's exhibition Image Blockers could be interpreted as abstractions — large green and orange rectangles covered with with six black acrylic shapes. These are Vogt's Newspaper Drawings and they are comprised of fifteen front sections of the New York Times whose dates span the last few years. Newspaper Drawing: Lemons and Newspaper Drawing: Stars (all works 2024) are push-pinned on a large wall of the otherwise empty space. Each front page has been painted either green (Lemons) or orange (Stars), while the rest of the pages are untouched. The papers are casually secured to the wall so many of them droop to reveal the content inside. Pieces of black acrylic almost as large as a single newspaper page in the shape of a lemon or starburst cover parts of the headline pages. Though partially obscured, it is impossible not to scrutinize the words and images and reflect on the news of the days represented in relation to the present.
In another gallery are two loosely assembled wall sculptures. Image Blocker 5 and Image Blocker 6 are crafted from acrylic, linen, paper and thread and occupy either side of a passageway to the last room of the exhibition. Based on the shapes of ancient Cycladic terra cotta vessels, these soft flattened forms retain some three-dimensionality. Because they share the space with a projected video, they are not lit so their presence is ambiguous. On the opposite wall is a large video projection titled Book XII (Channel 1). This five minute loop with sound explores time. The central image is a large analogue wall clock set to 12:00. Although the second hand moves backwards, the time hardly changes. Digital clocks appear and disappear from the frame. Dressed in a lab coat, a woman (the artist) reads from a newspaper. Layered as if a filmic collage are sequences of the woman spinning the starburst shape from the newspaper drawings and holding up different objects toward the camera, further fragmenting the image. The video flip-flops from positive to negative in concert with a pulsating soundtrack that feels more like noise than any distinguishable sound.
Vogt's other videos also unabashedly indulge in the use of digital effects and the layering of imagery — be they newspapers, actual spirals or lemons (relating to the Newspaper Drawings or Image Blocker sculptures), or an image of the spinning globe. Lemon & Egg is presented on a small screen and is the most abstract of Vogt's video works. Here, a small lemon floats up and down in the frame that is otherwise filled by an organic spiral and a blown up EKG line originally made of thread. This imagery is often juxtaposed with the silhouette of an egg. Although obtuse, this digital video does connect to the static works on view.
Thinking about the title of the exhibition — Image Blockers — and the purposeful layering within the works, it seems as though Vogt is relating past and present, drawing from popular as well as art historical contexts (for example Hollis Frampton's 1969 film Lemon) calling attention to the ever changing world as well as its sameness — the repetition of words, of pictures of warring nations — and asking viewers to notice the spaces in between.