A Parallel Planets piece by Pepe Serapio
Marrying photography and painting should only be easy in theory. Taking a photograph of a Van Gogh or a Rembrandt does not exactly prove the perfect union of both mediums. Anyone can take a photograph of an established artist's canvas, and it remains just that: a photograph of a canvas. Often, there is no merge, only transference.
When Melissa Cooke pursued her "Surfaced" project between 2012 and 2013, there was a clear goal: break boundaries. Each image establishes the blurring of two different mediums. Using her own face as the canvas, Melissa douses herself in the painter's weapon of choice: liquid colours. She chronicles everything through photography, referencing the craft of drawing and painting. The craft of photography is then referenced by the final graphite drawing. With everything thrown together, cast together, it proves difficult to assign a single traditional descriptor. Is it just photography? Is it both? Or is it none of the above?
Driving the point home, the images themselves do not also conform to the traditional aspects of portraits, which serves to only draw more attention to the task at hand. The busts are replaced with close-ups that are often too extreme to distract from the core of the work. The ambiguity, the abstraction, is pushed to the surface through the obliteration of the flesh by the paint, the camera's distorted view, or even the photocopier glass.
Melissa's process is definitely messy, but it does a good job of emphasizing the thematic scenarios she frequently depicts. Exploring themes such as beauty, vulnerability, and identity, Melissa's work speaks for a generation of creative frustration. In particular, several images from "Surfaced" evoke concerns regarding how art, or the pursuit of art, or specifically a certain message or theory, can blind an artist to other pursuits such as biological and social needs. Is that "blindness" an inherent quality of art as a creative field? Is it necessary? Can it be done away with? Should it be done away with?
Certainly, much of Melissa's work is physically demanding, at the very least in terms of interaction, but she doesn't seem to mind. It's a way of life for her, a ritual of sorts, the means to a release.
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An MFA graduate of Wisconsin, Melissa Cooke, whose resume is available online through her website, is represented by California's Koplin Del Rio. Melissa has had numerous solo exhibitions from 2005 to 2013 and has been exhibiting with groups as early as 2000. Follow her on Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram.
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