|
Indepth Arts News:
"A PATIENT COPY: A Solo Exhibition by Lynne Lomofsky"
2009-03-02 until 2009-03-20
AVA - Association for Visual Arts
Cape Town, ,
ZA South Africa
Lynne Lomofsky's new multimedia exhibition, A Patient Copy, opens at the AVA on March 2nd. Her first solo exhibition since Body of Evidence, which showed at the AVA in June 2003, Lomofsky continues her engagement with 'the sick body' and how illness may be visualised and represented, drawing - often literally - on the medical imagery that schematically represents her physical status, and infers the themes of her daily realities. A Patient Copy includes recent explorations in paint, digital print, video and the latest biomedical imaging technologies.
This current body of work has a looser feel to Lomofsky's previous renderings: it engages more confidently and with greater ownership of the material at hand, claiming rightful access to and engagement with the hi-tech medical visualisations of herself as the subject, coupled with a playful manipulation of paint that alters these. Thematically the work is also more varied than before. Moving beyond "confront[ing] the vulnerability of the diseased body, the transience of life and the struggle with mortality", Lomofsky here engages her body as something creative rather than threatening; as the site of something that can be imaged with beauty and insight, even in illness. A positive visualisation.
Consistent with this mood is her insistent use of the technologies that patients are usually disallowed access to - highly specialised digital scans and visual interpretations of the body; and this insistence mirrors the tangibly emotional change of this new work. The hi-tech biomedical imagery that she has acquired - usually safeguarded for the privileged view of doctors alone, and very rarely made accessible to a patient - suddenly becomes available in this instance in a public domain. Lomofsky boldly brings the specialist language of diagnostic medicine into a creative environment, and in so doing, encourages an interpretation of that scientific literacy outside of the specialist domain. She pulls medical imagery in a different direction, where the clinical is set up against the personailised; the tightly contained and guarded becomes fluid and open to new interpretation; and the mind and body finally make their way to connect through the materiality of paint. The interpretive shift that she brings to bear demystifies and finds interest, rather than sheer terror, in having the interior body imaged.
"My job for the past two years has been to retrieve the properties from the doctors [of scans that have imaged my body] to create new meanings and visuals that move away from the diagnostic," says Lomofsky.
Her new work exists as an interface between anatomy and art, which has a long history; and between science and art; and creates a platform where the body, even in illness, can be engaged and pondered intimately, playfully and beautifully.
Lynne Lomofsky holds a BA from UCT, a National Diploma in Fine Art through the Cape Technikon, and a Masters in Fine Art through the Michaelis School of Fine Art (UCT). Solo exhibitions include Body of Evidence (AVA, Cape Town, 2003); the critically-acclaimed Cancer Ward Le: 32 (Mau Mau Gallery, Cape Town, 1997 and Rembrandt van Rijn Gallery, Johannesburg, 1998) and Recent Work (Koffler-Loggia Gallery, Toronto, Canada, 1992).
Lynne Lomofsky has exhibited in South Africa and abroad. Her work has been recognised by a number of awards and public grants in Toronto where she lived for seven years. She has lived and worked in Cape Town since returning here for treatment for lymphoma in 1995.
Related Links:
| | 
|
