Suzanne Walters: Anthropomorphic Ambiguities – Megakles Rogakos
Suzanne Walters has, from the beginning, carefully manipulated and animated the protagonists of her art. She brings into existence, stages and photographs clay models and painted backdrops before ever approaching the canvas. Thus, she acts as director and producer of their dramas, which results in a sort of “vertical’ –rather complex–artistic production. These maquettes are overtly staged and lit on color-saturated backdrops, and the resulting images – with their vast expanses of palpable colored light – unexpectedly reference the worlds of luminist painting. The aesthetic of Walters’ art is above all atmosphere. Harmonious contrasts of color have a near psychedelic effect, evoking a feeling of euphoria. There is a sensitive relationship between the model and its background, as if the environment were caressing or even encapsulating the figure. She short-circuits any possibility of disengaging the model from its background, as if the two are melting into one another. Her art blurs boundaries between reality and illusion, an aspect which accentuates the metaphysical aura of “objectless-ness.” While the figures in these paintings are not the personages of Disney or anime, they are much stranger cousins, many times removed. Furthermore, in their heightened anthropomorphism, these saintly creatures increasingly appeal to the subconscious, to a degree that we readily fraternize with them and their conditions. Suzanne Walters’ paintings have the hallucinatory effect of dreams, in which relationships are experiences as great moments, and time and space are annihilated.
Suzanne Walters 