Whereas theories of tradition emphasize precedence, WB's description of our photographically based culture emphasizes aftermath, an orientation that's perhaps forensic or traumatized or melancholic but always gropingly retrospective. Just look at our TV programming, which is filled with crime and courtroom shows about mulling over left-behind evidence and attempting to reconstruct past traumatic events. From the vantage of tradition, the past is seen as pervading and structuring the present, making it knowable; whereas, according to WB, today the present is haunted by a past that is alien and unknown.
Xiaoze Xie and Heather Mekkelson faithfully, meticulously translate from photographs to make their art. How does their work relate to shock, aura, memory, trauma, recollection?
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News today reaches us at a high pace and in fragments. We can read a headline about a car bombing in Iraq, see a photograph of a starving African child, and hear a brief news clip about Rod Blagojevich all within a few minutes. This is some of what Xiaoze Xie alludes to in his paintings of newspaper stacks. By depicting only the portions of photographs or text that line the folds of newspapers, his paintings articulate the shocking and traumatic fragments of mass media coverage. However, in Xie's work, these disparate pieces sometimes start to come together in a cohesive picture. Fragmented information converges and triggers involuntary memory of a certain human experience. Because they are depicted on canvas instead of newsprint, these involuntary memories have a sense of permanence.
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