In conjunction with the
group show, "Dark States,"
art collector, writer, and
blogger James Wagner
(www.jameswagner.com)
interviewed Bill about
his work.
|
|
James Wagner: Like most children (and those who remain so despite the accumulation of years) I’ve always been fascinated with miniatures. At the same time, like a child, I’ve also always been able to satisfy a lust for creating environments of my very own, probably beginning even before I rearranged the weeds and boards in the vacant lot down the street when I was seven, and later tramped-down the cat-tails above my favorite beach to make some kind of burrow. Maybe I’m just something of a Holly Golightly, but I’m thinking of the title of the show and I’m wondering whether the images you have created are necessarily dark?
Bill Finger: It is interesting that you would notice or question the perceived “dark” aspect of my work. It seems to come more from viewer perception or the way people have read the work more so than anything that I have intentionally instilled into it. People frequently ask me whether I really had such a dark or troubled childhood. Perhaps this is something that is residing in me just below the surface. Perhaps my childhood was darker than I am willing to admit. I will say that there are ideas in the background, to the time of the late 60’s and early 70’s, which I am linking on a personal level into the photographs. For example, the image “1969–age 8” that shows a view from with in a drainage culvert, I personally or mentally link this particular memory to a more base memory of viewing coverage of the Vietnam War. I do feel it somewhat ironic that while I was playing “tunnel rat” with my friends that there where soldiers in Vietnam playing a form of cat and mouse in similar such dark spaces. It was also a time when I held a very strong fear of growing up and going to war myself.
As far as the title of the show, actually this body of work is called paramnesia. Paramnesia is a medical term, which deals with a confusion of fact and fantasy in memory. It is a mixing that can seem very real to the person experiencing it. This title came out of my belief that this accurately describes the end product of my exploration. I do believe that the miniature holds a place in the connection that can occur between fantasy and reality. Perhaps this is where the fascination with the miniature comes from. I think that it connects with a common psyche that we hold that involves recreating something either that can be controlled or that can become some sort of fetish object. To make something in miniature you can then in a sense own it or use it very much in the way people use photographs—as a replacement for the original. As far as my own childhood, the miniature and fantasy took the form of famous horror movie characters and scenes instead of the typical cars and planes. But I don’t feel that my work necessarily speaks to this element of my past. Of course, I hadn’t considered this aspect of my childhood to till you raised the question.
JW: How has your physical recreation of these spaces affect your subsequent memory of them?
BF: In recreating these spaces from my memories I would have to admit to a certain degree of paramnesia. I think that this is a common thing with memory. You key into certain elements that serve as triggers for certain memories. So, if anything my recreating of these places has brought me closer to the time but has also filled me with a certain amount of doubt as to the veracity of the specifics. In this sense, memory can be something like photographs. They only show or reveal so much. Everything that is outside of the borders or existed between images must be reconstructed by the minds of the participants. And in my case, by filling in this missing information or detail, I have to consider how much of it is colored by the lens of who I am now as a person. I am obviously a very different person now than when I was eight years old. Therefore, memories are constantly readjusted based upon life experiences and personal contexts. So, the more of these that I create the more they become jumping off points to destinations that I am not completely sure truly existed. The truth in memory is like ignis fatuus or the will-o-the-wisp. (Please excuse the reference-—I did grow up in the South.) The more that you pursue it (truth), the further away that you are led from it. All of this has made me look at my memories with a degree of, hopefully, healthy skepticism.
JW: Speaking as one who finds these images so familiar, do you anticipate the viewer somehow sharing your memory of your “dark states” even though they are so very personal?
BF: Memories though very personal often cue into societal or cultural elements that make up shared experiences of a particular time or place. A sort of collective consciousness, if you will. I attempt to play off this, which includes making use of a certain filmic quality. Movies have become such a powerful connection that most of us as a society share. I believe that I can use this quality to establish an opening into the images. I also believe that in re-creating the spaces that are somewhat common and banal that I can speak to a common landscape that is quite familiar even if you never spent time in those areas that border suburbia. So, I am hoping that this is the familiarity that you felt when viewing my work. This familiarity can allow the viewer to make at least a base connection with the work. This is key for it is only by establishing a dialog that I can then use a “point of view” perspective to propel the audience even further into each image. If I did not do this then I do feel that there is always the danger that the work could become too personal or alien. In other words, if there wasn’t a way in or there wasn’t a way to identify with what you are seeing then the work would fall flat. Sure, it would be great for me but if you had no in into it then what good is it? At that point, it risks becoming just therapy. And who wants to see that?
JW: Are you ever tempted to preserve the haunting little worlds you create, or, and this is a very different question, do you ever think about presenting them as sculpture, as miniatures or in real-size installations?
BF: At the moment, I create the miniatures solely to be photographed. I think that this comes in deference to my past life, as I call it. I spent 16 years working on movie sets and was always fascinated by this creation of a temporary space that was created, with great effort, only to be filmed for a day or two and then destroyed. Ultimately, they are temporary installations that serve a theatrical function and then afterwards only exist as part of a two-dimensional film. I have considered creating miniatures as sculptural objects in and of themselves but I think that the perspective of placing the viewer into the miniature is so important and that this would be lost if presented as a sculpture. (Even though I do have a number of friends who are sculptors who tell me that, I am a sculptor who is afraid to admit it.) I am very fascinated with the idea of life-size installation in which the viewer could actually move into and interact within the space. I could definitely see me working in installation in the future. Perhaps this is a nature progression for my work. Moreover, it does speak to the whole film set thing, which of course is another element to my past that is wrapped up into all of this.
“Dark States” Photographs by Jesse Burke, Bill Finger, and Stephen Hilyard; an exhibition at Platform Gallery, Seattle, November 25 to December 31, 2024
All content copyright 2010 Platform Gallery LLC and the artists.
|
