The Secret Life of Figurines:
Artist Liliana Porter
by Ross Rice
Liliana employs a variety of skills in her deceptively simple approach. Once she has assembled the subject matter from her cast of figures, she photographs them against predominantly white backgrounds (though blue and red are also occasionally used), with precise positioning of light to achieve the right kind of shadow. Recent works are referred to as “dialogues,” where two selected figures/objects are positioned facing each other. The serendipitous interplay between them, presented in this neutral setting, makes for an odd connection. Two faces looking at each other always begs a story—what are they thinking as they return the gaze?
The photograph seals the moment right where Liliana wants you to see it, usually with large amounts of space that give everything an Alice-in-Wonderland sense of scale, sometimes isolating the subjects, sometimes completing them.
Liliana’s more recent forays into video allows her to guide you around her world at her pace. “When you have a video, you really get to control the time that the viewer sees the image.” With a sparse and sympathetic score by Silvia Meyer (married to Marco Maggi), the nineteen-minute selection of vignettes is what has me with the giggles. You really start to see souls emerging from wind-up toys; one that can’t be stopped from rope-skipping by authoritarian kicking, the scary metallic wheezing of a demented fiddler as he flops and leers.
It’s revealing what these short glimpses offer us, and how easy it is to juxtapose a human meaning to a staggering and falling wind-up penguin.
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