CONTEMPORARY FLORAL ARRANGEMENT | SARA CWYNAR

Sara Cwynar’s research (Vancouver, 1985) focuses on the process of reworking archival images. Hers is a practice that studies every form of representation, exploring the different layers of meaning on both formal and conceptual level.
Images depicting still-life flower bouquets – found and borrowed from the New York Public Library – become the starting point on which Cwynar composes the series Contemporary Floral Arrangement, of which the work Contemporary Floral Arrangement – #144551 (1967) #2 The Relationship is a Matter of Style is a part. In particular, the background of this latter artwork is itself a digital collage created by the artist, who has combined and merged various types of flowers that do not bloom at the same season.

The image is printed in large format, so that the printing screen emerges clearly visible. As the following step in the process of creation, the artist places an innumerable quantity of objects of different types on the print: pliers, dice, clothespins, photographs, cosmetics, cups, flowers, pencils, represent only a small part of the elements that make up this work.
The objects are positioned in such a way as to evoke as much as possible the color and shape of the portion of the image they cover: red buttons are therefore placed over carnations, pink clothespins cover the dahlias, ropes and green pens counterpart the stems and leaves.

The energy released by this colorful and heterogeneous bunch of objects that the artist has staged has nothing to envy to the bouquet of flowers originally depicted in the background image. A dynamic representation full of elements that nourishes the sight, stimulating the viewers’ mind to search for the objects they know and, at the same time, to try to discover the meaning and imagine the origin of the others.

The final form in which the artwork is presented to the public does not materialize in a collage made of physical objects, but into its photograph, taken and then printed on a 1:1 scale. This additional operation is not an exercise in style, but the confirmation that the focal point of Cwynar’s artistic practice is the constant questioning of photographic language in its most traditional form.

Sara Cwynar
Contemporary Floral Arrangement – #144551 (1967) #2 The Relationship is a Matter of Style, 2023
Archival pigment print, 152,4 x 101,6 cm (60 x 40 in)
© Sara Cwynar, courtesy the artist

06/03/2024