Morgan Horton
Fractures are Natural, 2010. Dried leaves and thread
When something is fractured we as humans have a tendency towards wanting to fix it. In fixing the fracture, however, the thing in question shifts from the realm of the “natural” to that of the “unnatural” – the abnormal.
I use something natural, leaves, which have fractures in them and hang them amongst something unnatural, leaves that have had the fractures fixed.
Evaluator: Elisabeth
ReplyDeleteArtist: Morgan
In Fractures are Natural, Morgan suspended dried and pressed leaves from the ceiling so that they hung in midair in a downward facing direction (that is – stems pointed upwards). Most of the leaves were torn or “fractured” in places and thread was used on a few of them to try and repair these spots. The overall piece is well unified. It consists of multiple objects of similar colors suspended in a space to create a fairly large three-dimensional volume created by negative space despite the small mass of the two-dimensional objects. The placement of the objects is well done, and while the right side of the display (if you are facing it) is higher than the left side, it does not detract much from the overall feel. Rather, it adds to the piece in that it makes it seem more natural and less rigid and staged. The way the leaves are displayed is also interesting in that it forces you to interact with them. They are displayed at a level in which your very movement causes the leaves to also move. Because of how lightweight and flat they are, even the smallest change in surroundings causes them to swing.
The way in which the leaves are sewn together does not detract from the overall unity of the piece. The thread used is light in color and in thin enough that unless the viewer gets close and looks for the details, you might not notice it at all. However, once noticed, the stitches are almost eerie in that they do very little to cover the small tears and holes in the leaves. The stitches also leave small holes where the needle went through to make the stitches. In this way, the leaves really communicate what the artist is trying to say. All of the leaves are fractured, even if just a tiny bit, but only a few of them are sewn together. And with the thread’s general failure in fixing the holes in the leaves (and its tendency to add more holes to the problem), it causes one to think about the way in which these repairs can cause more harm than good. What is interesting is also that some of the most fractured leaves are not sewn together. This also makes you wonder why these particular leaves were or were not chosen to be fixed. Along with the title, the piece brings to mind the idea of fixing fractures and comments on why fractures are ok and don’t need to be fixed and how fixing them can cause, at times, more damage than good. I think the artist does a great job of exploring facture, and not just in the physical representation in her use of torn leaves, but also in exploring through these leaves the perceptions we have of fractures in our world.