Imago Project

"When you look at a wall spotted with stains or with a mixture of stones . . . you may discover: landscapes, mountains, figures in action; or strange faces–an endless variety of objects . . . like the sound of bells in whose jangle you may find any name or word you choose to imagine.” –  Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci

“We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves… Every image embodies a way of seeing.” – John Berger, Ways of Seeing

Imago ignata (unknown image) is a Latin term for a pattern of colors, shapes  or words that have no correspondence to the world of external reality. The photographs in the Imago series are of random paint, graffiti, faded handbills, and weathered surfaces, found on walls, lampposts, and doors in the streets of New York, Brooklyn, and Los Angeles.

There has always been a street – from the time that we humans first gathered in villages.  Many artists have found inspiration in the street: Schwitters, Rauschenberg, Siskind, Basquiat, all come to mind.  In the 1920s, Kurt Schwitters began incorporating materials found in the street: newsprint, string, sackcloth, wire mesh, in a series of collages. He asserted that the use of nontraditional materials in image making is as valid as paint.  The use of discarded everyday materials found in the street suggested an unexpected path of exploration.

Nonrepresentational imagery is generally believed to be the domain of painting.  Although I use a camera to make these images, I have come to think in terms of an individual image, rather than whether it is a painting, a collage, or a photograph. The process of abstraction starts with a physical object which is then “deconstructed” and re-imagined according to set principles, such as Cubism.  By photographing an object and cropping out any reference to its physical context, it is “abstracted” and transformed into an intangible realm of color, energy, mood, and mystery.  I photograph commonplace, and consequently, “invisible” surfaces as a means of probing the imagination.

Eric Cato

■

Home Page

Purchase Info  Bio  Installation  Contact

© Eric Cato 2004