By Suzanne Révy
One of the things to love about drawing or painting is the brushwork, smudges and marks created by the artist’s robust working hands. They are a physical manifestation of a human presence. The mechanical nature of photography removes that direct gesture in the resulting prints, but Tabitha Soren has managed the neat trick of offering painterly gestures in her large scale color photographs in a series titled “Surface Tension’” currently on view at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College through June 9th 2019.
“Katie’s Vacation Photo, 2018” by Tabitha Soren (installation image by Suzanne Révy)
After noticing the marks and fingerprints left on the screens of small digital devices such as mobile phones or digital pads, Soren turned to large format photography to render the blotches in excruciating detail. Each image is carefully lit to emphasize the screens’ surfaces which are also backlit by images emanating from behind the swirl of blotches. The staggering detail is impacted by the generous size of the prints; these objects share a kinship with the physicality of painting; they simply immerse the viewer into a delicious visual dream. “Greenland is Shrinking,” for example, evokes the later works of the great 19th century British painter JMW Turner and “Katie’s Vacation photo” employs a palette reminiscent of Monet’s haystack studies.
Featured Image: “Greenland is Shrinking, iPad, 2018” by Tabitha Soren (installation image by Suzanne Révy)
Dreams, of course, can become surreal journeys through a rambling haze of imagery and memory. The images emerging from the screens of Soren’s work range from landscape and portraits to news, documentary and vernacular sources. Soren is raising questions about the sometimes disjointed manner in which we experience the visual feeds we follow as we touch these small screens throughout each day. Tragedies such as the violence and resulting protests in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 or last year’s devastating Camp fire in northern California become tiny images in our own hands. By enlarging those screens, Soren layers the disorder and brutality of those events with the distortions of the personal touch. Asking the question, how are we moved by far away tragedies that flicker past like a dream?
Installation view: Surface Tension by Tabitha Soren (l-r) “Truth Our Ferguson,” “Yonni Wolf, 2015,” “Camp Fire, 2018,” and “VioletGrey.com/violet_files” (Installation image by Suzanne Révy)
And the human desire for touch and connection are revealed in intimate personal pictures, a good night kiss sent through the phone by Soren’s child or the reassurance he was asleep when her husband texted a picture of a sleeping child. That picture is paired with one of an empty bed in an institutional setting. Titled “Mass Incarceration” we learn it is in a prison, and likely someone’s child might be sleeping there, raising a questions about our economic divisions and privileges. We long for the touch of those who are away from us, and yet the things we touch the most these days are computer screens. Can they replace human touch?
Installation view: “Surface Tension” by Tabitha Soren (l-r) “Mass Incarceration” and “Proof the Kids are in Bed” (installation image by Suzanne Révy)
It was on a screen that I first saw Soren’s pictures, but something was lost in translation, and witnessing her prints first hand in this intimate show is profound. It is an elegant exhibition, presented salon style with large prints in a relatively small gallery. She has created something that is both conceptually and visually rich; it allows viewers eyes to wander and our minds to wonder about our changing habits and experiences with information, technology and photography.
For more information
https://www.wellesley.edu/davismuseum/whats-on/current/node/161576
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