CHRISTINE ELFMAN
All solid shapes dissolve in light
March 19 - April 30, 2022
“We photograph to define, hold, capture things. However, pictures remind us of everything left undescribed and unknown. Early photographers were obsessed with fixing the image, so it would last forever. Yet experience shows us that the more you try to hold something still, the more it’s ruined. Taking a picture is like catching a bird for a collection, or turning a person into a statue. The subject matter of my work reflects this desire for security. However, the materiality of the prints acknowledges the necessity of change. This ruin - the fading - is the subject, medium, and fate of my photographs. And in their fading, they’re living, changing slowly, imperceptibly over time.”
— Christine Elfman
Christine Elfman
Reproduction IV, 2021 (Variation II)
Lichen Dye on Paper (anthotype, resin coated), 27.5 x 22”
All solid shapes dissolve in light centers around the Christine Elfman’s work with anthotypes made from lichen dye and developed through month-long exposures in the sun. Elfman uses both medium and subject to explore the unity and tension of binaries such as stillness and change, distance and intimacy, and visibility and the unknown.
Bearing witness to the natural cycle of growth and decay, the anthotype is a photograph made from the same components that eventually facilitate its entropy. Christine Elfman’s fading pictures embody the constant transformation of objects, images, and memory. The images develop slowly: sitting outside for a month, the sun bleaches paper saturated with light-sensitive natural dyes. Once complete, these unfixable photographs slowly fade from the very same light that allows them to be seen.
In All solid shapes dissolve in light, Elfman has coated many of her anthotypes with resin, prolonging their lifespan. Like an insect encased in amber, the resin acts as a preservative, slowing the breakdown of the dye molecules. When paired with fixed silver gelatin and gold toned iron-silver prints, the images emphasize a tension between the archival impulse and ephemerality of photography and the subjects themselves. The works offer a rare opportunity to witness the constant cycle of growth and decay, as the images are continuously made anew as they decline. In contrast to the ephemerality of their medium, the subjects of these pictures are plaster casts of the artist’s and mother’s hands, fragments of plaster cast statues, and rocks - tactile objects that may appear solid, yet dissolve in light.
Christine Elfman
Fragment VII (triptych), 2021 (Variation I)
Left & Right: Lichen Dye on Paper (anthotype, resin coated) Middle: Silver Gelatin Print with Lichen Dye, 12 x 46.5”
Christine Elfman
Fragment III, 2019 (Variation I)
Lichen Dye on Paper (anthotype, resin coated), 19 x 25”
Christine Elfman
Cave I, 2021
Silver Gelatin Print, Edition 1/2 + 2AP, 29 x 29”
Christine Elfman
Fragment IV (diptych), 2020 (Variation II)
Left: Silver Gelatin Print with Lichen Dye Right: Lichen Dye on Paper (anthotype, resin coated), 14.5 x 23”
Christine Elfman
Fossil, Glass Sponge, 2022 (Variation I)
Lichen Dye on Paper (anthotype), 20 x 16”
Christine Elfman
Hermetic Photograph, 2021
Lichen Dye on Paper (anthotype, resin coated) in anoxic aluminum enclosure with wooden case, 13 x 10 x 8.75”
“Fossils are an exaggerated form of casting or photography, taking place at an expanded time scale. Photographs, plaster casts, fossils, geological formations are all incredibly detailed surface impressions of ancient subjects. The fossils that I made into fading pictures range between 100-400 million years old. One of them is a petrified beech leaf, and the other a petrified glass sponge from the time when New York state was an ocean. It reminds me of graffiti on the wall of an old building that later burnt down, ‘Never underestimate the power of time to change everything.’ If photographs, fossils, and broken statues could speak, they might say the same thing.”
- Christine Elfman
Christine Elfman
Fossil, Beech Leaf (diptych), 2022 (Variation I)
Left: Archival Pigment Print with Lichen Dye Right: Lichen Dye on Paper (anthotype), 11 x 19”
Christine Elfman
Reproduction III, 2021 (Variation I)
Lichen Dye on Paper (anthotype, resin coated), 16 x 20”
Christine Elfman
Fragment I (diptych), 2021 (Variation I)
Left: Silver Gelatin Print with Lichen Dye (resin coated) Right: Lichen Dye on Paper (anthotype, resin coated), 11.5 x 18”
Christine Elfman
Rock Wall II, 2022
Gold Toned Iron Silver Print, Edition varée 1/2 + 1AP, 56.25 x 71”
“A photograph is like a rock wall. It lures you in with all these details and texture, but then keeps you at a distance as a two-dimensional surface impression. You literally walk up to a wall when viewing photographs in a gallery. I was also thinking of this rock wall as being like the origin or mother of the rest of the plaster and rock fragments in the exhibition. As if all the other pieces had broken off the large picture.”
- Christine Elfman
Christine Elfman
Reproduction II, 2021 (Variation II)
Lichen Dye on Paper (anthotype, resin coated), 20 x 16”
Christine Elfman
Fold, 2020 (Variation I)
Lichen Dye on Paper (anthotype, resin coated), 19 x 15”
Christine Elfman
Rock Formation, 2019
Silver Gelatin Print, Edition 1/2 + 1AP, 27 x 35”
Christine Elfman
Fragment VI (diptych), 2020 (Variation I)
Left: Silver Gelatin Print Right: Lichen Dye on Paper (anthotype, resin coated), 14.5 x 37.5”
Christine Elfman
Cloth Water Stone I, 2021 (Variation I)
Lichen Dye on Paper (anthotype, resin coated), 39 x 30.5”
Christine Elfman
Reproduction I, 2020 (Variation II)
Lichen Dye on Paper (anthotype, resin coated), 16.5 x 13.5”
Christine Elfman
Fragment II, 2019 (Variation I)
Lichen Dye on Paper (anthotype, resin coated), 13 x 16.25”
Christine Elfman
Cave II, 2021
Silver Gelatin Print, Edition 1/2 + 2AP, 29 x 29”
