8 screenprints on felt
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/lorna-simpson-12577" aria-label="More by Lorna Simpson" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Lorna Simpson</a>
Haze
Purchased with assistance from an anonymous donor (Tate Americas Foundation) 2020
<p><span>Haze </span>is a unique large-scale serigraph on felt made by the American artist Lorna Simpson in 1998. The central section is composed of six individual panels which are grouped and hung together to make one image; this is bookended by two smaller text panels which sit on either side. The work was produced by silkscreen printing individual sections of a black and white photographic image onto the felt panels so that they abut each other to form a coherent image, although the seams remain visible. It depicts a sprawling urban landscape of high-rise apartment blocks viewed from a height, framed at the bottom by a dense line of trees and at the top by a smoggy and hazy sky. The text panels narrate a conversation between two individuals who scan the scene in search of a particular something or someone. <span>Haze </span>is part of a body of work begun by Simpson in 1994 which has been grouped under the collective title of the <span>Public Sex </span>series.</p>
installation 8 screenprints felt
Haze
displayed: 1727 × 1753 × 5 mm
Purchased with assistance from an anonymous donor (Tate Americas Foundation) 2020
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<i>Haze </i>is a unique large-scale serigraph on felt made by the American artist Lorna Simpson in 1998. The central section is composed of six individual panels which are grouped and hung together to make one image; this is bookended by two smaller text panels which sit on either side. The work was produced by silkscreen printing individual sections of a black and white photographic image onto the felt panels so that they abut each other to form a coherent image, although the seams remain visible. It depicts a sprawling urban landscape of high-rise apartment blocks viewed from a height, framed at the bottom by a dense line of trees and at the top by a smoggy and hazy sky. The text panels narrate a conversation between two individuals who scan the scene in search of a particular something or someone. <i>Haze </i>is part of a body of work begun by Simpson in 1994 which has been grouped under the collective title of the <i>Public Sex </i>series. </p>
<p>Prompted by a desire to explore new possibilities in her practice, Simpson made the decision to exclude the human figure from her work in the early 1990s. Begun during this time, works from the <i>Public Sex </i>series depict empty places – predominantly cityscapes and interiors – which ostensibly function as studies in the urban environment. Despite the <i>physical</i> absence of the human body from the work, however, it remains central to the narrative through the inclusion of lengthy text captions which frame each photographic image. Narrating stories of public but unseen erotic encounters and the ways in which they might be seen or overheard, these text panels transform the empty landscapes into locations teeming with illicit possibility. The size of the photographic image, deliberately produced on a bodily scale, deliberately forces the viewer into a position of voyeurism shared by the subjects revealed in each text. In this sense, the work explores the politics of looking and of being seen, as well as what art historian Kellie Jones has termed the ‘discomfort of surveillance’ (Jones, ‘(Un)Seen &amp; Overheard: Pictures by Lorna Simpson’, in Jones, Golden and Iles 2002, p.74).</p>
<p>In <i>Haze</i> the accompanying text panels narrate a conversation between two individuals who scan the urban skyline for something, or someone, in particular. In an informal and familiar tone, the first individual offers a series of directions to the other, attempting to focus their gaze on a certain spot in the distance through reference to various architectural markers: </p>
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</p><blockquote>Okay, one more time, look down the widest street – you got that … right – count 1-2-3-4 rooftops – then look across to your right, past the big railings of connecting balconies, and look for the tangle of antennas, across from the triangle roof – do you see that?</blockquote>
<p>The second individual is unable to locate what is being referred to, however, before the first concludes that whatever was being looked at is no longer on view; ‘wait they just got up and went inside – you missed it’. Despite the lack of any clarifying detail – and in the context of this body of felt works as a whole – the conversation insinuates that they have been using a position of elevated height and distance, or a concealed vantage point, to voyeuristically observe a couple engaged in a private act in a public space. </p>
<p>Talking about the source material for the stories which form the textual component of this body of felt works, Simpson has explained: ‘They go between fiction and truth. They are related to stories that I have heard or made up. They are either about things that have really occurred or that I have heard about. I am interested in adding some new dimensions to thinking about particular spaces, more than just sex. It is about how one is being watched.’ (Simpson, quoted in Novakov 1998, p.173.) The title of this work suggests the haze of the urban environment, in which dust and smoke from the city and its roads obscure the clarity of the sky. </p>
<p>Whilst the ambiguous text narrative contributes to an atmosphere of unknown sensuality, Simpson’s choice of material is also a key factor in the composition of the work. Silkscreened onto felt – a material which incites and encourages touch with its woolly strands – the tactile surface amplifies the tonalities of the ink and gives the work a sculptural quality. Viewing the use of felt as an investigation of surface and bodily connection, Simpson has said: ‘Felt is a material that looks like compressed hair. I continue to use it, because on a formal level, I got tired of the idea of photographs behind frames, behind glass. With the felt, it gives it a softer quality, the look of photogravure.’ (Simpson, quoted in Novakov 1988, p.176.)</p>
<p>With a longstanding interest in undermining systems of political and social stereotyping, Simpson deliberately disrupts the photographic image by printing it across six different panels. Each is silkscreened individually, enabling her to build up a composite image over time. Speaking about her use of fragmentation and the grid as a formal compositional device, Simpson has said: ‘I have always constructed things within the form of a grid – maybe starting out with whole images but quickly serializing them and segmenting them into quadrants to make up one entire image.’ (Simpson, quoted in Enwezor 2006, p.139.) This, she reveals, is central to her complication of the subject as a whole: ‘I have a tendency to do the same thing to the subject. The subject is always segmented or taken apart and reassembled in a particular way where you see the cracks and the seams where things are put together or re-constructed.’ (Simpson, quoted in Enwezor 2006, p.139.)</p>
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<b>Further reading</b>
<br/>Anna Novakov, ‘In Conversation with Lorna Simpson’, <i>Atlantica</i>, Winter 1998, pp.172–8.<br/>Kellie Jones, Thelma Golden and Chrissie Iles, <i>Lorna Simpson</i>, London and New York 2002, reproduced p.81.<br/>Okwui Enwezor, <i>Lorna Simpson</i>, New York 2006, reproduced pp.90–1.<br/>
<i>Lorna Simpson</i>, exhibition catalogue, Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography, Minneapolis and Jeu de Paume, Paris 2013–14, reproduced p.111. </p>
<p>Hannah Johnston<br/>November 2019</p>
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Summary
2021-11-24T00:00:00
summary
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