and pleasure rather than with vulnerability. At
about that same time, I decided that I wanted
to draw using my own blood as ink. While
considering what to render with blood, I was
researching the symbolic meaning of this very
loaded material in contemporary culture as well
as in the history of medicine and ritual. Blood
has historically embodied a range of disparate
meanings at different times and in different
cultures. I wanted the images to interrogate
the mutability of those meanings at the very
locus of where perception is processed: the
brain. The work was attempting to destabilize
our cultural associations around blood with the
neurological phenomena of pain. For example,
one can be bleeding but not in pain. And with
phenomena such as phantom limb, one can be
feeling pain in a part of the body they no longer
have. I found these delicate neuroanatomical
structures to be visual metaphors for this extreme fragility and complexity of the human
body. And these networked and repeated forms
are what led me to the traditional wallpaper and
doily patterns that I later printed and painted
in blood.
SAiA: One device you employ in your work
is recreating medical and scientific equipment
with a twist, such as your enlarged Tongue Depressors & Cotton Swabs piece, and your “Upside
Down, Inside Out” series with flesh-colored
silicon test-tube forms. What is it you hope
your viewer will get out of interacting with
these absurd objects?
LS: Absurdity is a wonderful way to question
what is compulsory or what is standard. Taking the stethoscope or the tongue depressor
to a ridiculous length is a good way to examine
the institutional standards of medical devices.
Unreasonable lengths and impractical materials can also serve as poetic metaphors that
interrogate dysfunctional social or institutional
paradigms. Rendering the instrument as “dysfunctional” can evoke the precariousness of the
biological condition but also the precariousness
of the ways in which we “treat” the body.
My recent series “Modular Systems” examines the absurd medicalization of consumer
products from pseudo-scientific branding to
biomedical instrument-like design. The series
of meticulously constructed magazine collages
includes source material culled from fashion,
beauty, lifestyle, and health magazines. Incongruous components come together to form
uncanny dystopian devices. The unified forms
seem strangely functional yet upon inspection
of the collage seams and components, the plausibility of the whole becomes destabilized.
Laura Splan’s sculptures
combining computerized
embroidery and remnant
cosmetic peel are currently on
view in “Dear Diary: Update
All” at the Neuberger Museum of Art (Purchase, NY)
through March 16, 2014.
Splan has an upcoming exhibition, “Meta Static,” at the
Dose Projects Space in Brooklyn, NY. Opening reception:
2/7/2014, 6-10pm.
Vigilant (2002). 120" x 204". Hand latch-hooked yarn on
stretched latch-hook canvas. Image courtesy of the artist.
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Visit Splan's website at
laurasplan.com.
SciArt in America February 2014