PHOTOGRAPHS
Rousse, Georges
France (1947 - )
Cabinet
1983 - 1984
Chromogenic color (Ektacolor) print
42 x 54 in. (106.7 x 137.2 cm) image size; 50 x 62 in. (127.0 x 157.5 cm) sheet size; 50 1/4 x 62 1/4 x 1 1/2 in. (127.6 x 158.1 x 3.8 cm) frame size; 48 x 84 in. (121.9 x 213.4 cm) assembled size
Joseph and Elaine Monsen Photography Collection, gift of Joseph and Elaine Monsen and The Boeing Company
FA 97.273 A

Since the early 1980s, Georges Rousse has been hailed as one of France's leading conceptual artists. Working inside abandoned, derelict, or condemned buildings, Rousse paints and draws on the walls and floors, as well as various found objects, to construct a two-dimensional image. He then records his modified space with a camera to capture the single vantage point that activates his illusion. Rousse's earlier work, such as this diptych, consists of figures floating in an oasis of 'two-dimensional meets three-dimensional' space. His newer work incorporates geometric shapes and plays more with the illusion of depth both visually and psychologically.

In Cabinet, Rousse pairs an image of a table that he covered with red cells with a larger image of the same table, which he painted with a figurative drawing traversing the composition. The deep blue color represents death, and the red color suggests the life-giving qualities of sunlight. Rousse wants us to contemplate our transitory existence and unavoidable destruction by meditating on architectural structures that will be renovated, be torn down, or just disappear." -- Label copy for a mezzanine exhibition, August 18 to November 27, 2000.