In Andrea Szilasi’s exhibition of photographic and collage works titled Plotter Prints, currently on show at Joyce Yahouda Gallery, we get an untraditional view of priceless and revered figurative sculptures housed in the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal. Equipped with only a cell phone Szilasi, captured her engagement as a museum visitor and also as an artist as she transformed 3 dimensional sculptures into 2 dimensional images on inexpensive plotter prints. Plotter printing usually refers to wide format printing and is commonly used to print architectural blueprints and other technical drawings.

Szilasi focuses on certain parts of the sculptures, which alters the viewing experience entirely from their original sculptural forms.  In some of the images certain body parts take center stage, such as a women’s shapely bottom, tender breasts or a consuming embrace. This narrowing focal point of parts, especially female body parts, is in keeping with a 2012 scientific study which found that both men and women view women in parts more often than in whole. The study titled Seeing women as objects: The sexual body part recognition bias was published by The European Journal of Social Psychology and states in the abstract that “objectification theory suggests that the bodies of women are sometimes reduced to their sexual body parts”. One can also argue that the spotlight on parts is out of adoration instead of objectification. Szilasi’s Plotter Prints also includes collaged pieces, such as Back, where the fragmentation of parts goes a step further by questioning what it is we’re exactly viewing. In other prints, like Light Ray and Light and Shoulder, the museum’s lighting makes a profound presence and becomes just as important of an element as the sculpture (part) itself. In some ways the fragmented collection of body parts can be a reminder of how fragmented our perception, and also interpretation, of our environment can be.

Before us, sculptures are still. However, in many instances photography captures a sliver of time during a scene of action. In Szilasi’s works we know that she has photographed still figurative objects. Yet, her reconstruction suggests that we are peering into this private, and often dramatic, physical exchange among or between the figures.

Another intriguing aspect about Plotter Prints is the modern accessibility one can have to priceless works via a cell phone camera. Museums serve the public, however they do possess an exclusive mystique within their environment. Some might even find a museum experience as holy. There is little that is virtual about the museum visit. In order to appreciate the works that they house, we must physically go there. Now, in perhaps the most data-sharing driven age yet, we can stand before an expensive work of art and photograph it with our cell phones. Its quick and easy and more importantly we can share what we capture. In the case of Plotter Prints the artist highlights this process and goes a step further by altering the works so much through her perspective, that they become something entirely new and different.

Galerie Joyce Yahouda, space 516
Andrea Szilasi
Plotter Prints
March 1 – 29, 2014
www.joyceyahoudagallery.com