ROUNDTABLE 6

Title
Photography and painting, their current borders and languages

Audience:
Anyone who wishes to better understand how the visual arts work today and the nature of their borders and their languages.

Topic:

Clearly defined limits between photography and painting no longer exist. As Pedro Meyer comments in his editorial #77 on zonezero.com: “What is the difference between a painting that uses a photograph as its source, a photo that appears to be artistic or painterly because of the patina of time and a credible story surrounding it, but that is fictitious in its aura of ‘true’ information?”
We are in an age where painting uses photographic languages; it seeks hyperrealism and uses photography as a starting point. Also photography takes resources from painting, for example it appears to be rendered with a brush, colors are saturated to resemble pigments, and compositions have a dream-like or surrealistic character. At the same time digital programs include tools that produce a pictorial sensation and they exist because there is a demand for them among users.

It is impossible for both media to avoid influencing each other and to generate new languages. As Pedro Meyer comments in his editorial #68: “In art there has been an ongoing search for new formal solutions to express the ever changing potential offered by and through new tools. So throughout the history of art, we have a panorama always in the process of transformation. The present moment is no exception... Techniques converge because they are made available to everyone who in turn can use them according to their own communication and cultural needs.

Being able to combine various styles within a single image, where the pictorial and the hyper real essence of unmanipulated photography can be merged into a seamless presentation, hinges directly on the possibility of control over every single pixel within the frame.”

Some examples of photographic works that deal with the subject can be seen in zonezero.com include:

Pedro Meyer “The camera's brushes”
Guillaume Zuili “Berlin 1999’
Daniel Weinstock
Dallas Walters “Toys”
Jerry Ueslmann “Other realities”
Paul Biddle “On the threshold of reality”
Alessandro Bavari "Sodoma and Gomorra"
Maggie Taylor “Now and Then”
Tetsuya Tamano
Grete Stern “Dreams”
Jorge Rueda “Mal de ojo” y “Nonsense”
Dominic Rouse

Duration:
Two hours.

Profile or Panel Members:
Curator.
Art historian.
Visual arts researcher.
Photographer of constructed images.
Painter.

Note: The panel may consist of all of the above members or just some of them.

Materials:
A computer and a video projector, if necessary.