Eileen Quinlan: Modern Contemporary

Eileen mid lecturing

Eileen Quinlan was born in Boston in 1972, where she grew up to receive her BA in Fine Arts at Tufts University in 1996. This was the birth of one of the greatest contemporary artists today. One week ago, February 18th, at UC Davis I was lucky enough to attend a lecture given by Eileen, it was actually truly enlighten to listen to her speak about her processes and her body of work. It was amazing to hear about how inspired by everyday life she can be. Eileen's style is considered to be an appropriation of late modern style by photographing media in an abstract manner.

Quinlan's Smoke and Mirrors Work

               She began her lecture talking about the early 2000's when she was photographing landscapes. More specifically the areas around her home and work, she discussed how she would use an analog camera to create more captivating photographs. She talked about  how she could take a shabby environment look more exotic. A big part of this topic that interested me was how she mentioned the use of analog over digital and how many people saw it as a political statement when in reality she just preferred the use of film over digital to create the desired effect.
      Next Eileen moves into 2005, when she graduated from Columbia, at which point she was moving into more self-exploratory photography. She moved from landscapes into 19th century style ghost photography, which is a style that implies spiritual exploration. Through this Eileen discovered the use of smoke in photography, she would set up "candid" shots of everyday scenes using smoke to cloud half the picture in an attempt to show how not everything is as it seems. The idea of the smoke and light through the smoke became a huge subject for her, through some encouragement from one of her professor she continued to expand on the smoke using mirrors and colored lights. That same year she opened her first exhibition in collaboration with her husband, Cherny Thompson, together they created 20 painting and 20 photographs framed them all the same and hung them to watch to see if the audience could tell the difference between them. Eileen discusses how this exhibition changed her view on what art could be and what painting was really. That anything in life could be viewed as art and that photography and painting weren't so different from one another.
             Fast forward three years to 2008 where Eileen had her own show in LA , there she was more focused on motif and designs. She discussing using more figurative subjects and reincorporating people again. To her it was about being able to feel the artwork through your eyes more then it just being an abstract piece, she wanted it to feel like something. For example she would use yoga mats and fabrics up close to create textures and designs that someone could visually feel. This is how she began to destroy the film just enough to create a different image on top of the photo. Eileen would do all kinds of stuff such as exposing the film to light or scratching the film. When she was talking about how she would destroy the film just to see what kind of image it would make and how it was never the same it reminded me of how the Dada in the modern period would all chance to help them create their images, it seemed similar that Eileen would just do random stuff to her film and whatever the result was she considered it art.

Quinlan's Later Work by Destroying the Film

     A couple years later, 2013, Eileen communicates a revival of older works and how to reincorporate them in new and different way. Especially the concept of the smoke and mirrors, the symbolism of them for her is the idea of vanity and shallow seduction of contemporary life. She expresses different uses objects of just everyday life that symbolize the everyone being transformed and looking at it in a different way. Not to mention the use of mixing medias such as the analog and digital, she has been experimenting with scanner and mirrors on scanner to create rainbow effects on the pictures. When I asked her what her favorite medium out of all that she used and talked about her answer was the mirrors. They had the most use and presence in her work they seemed to mean more to her then just a mirror it was a reflection of light and space, an appropriation of  reality and twisted to be abstract. 

              Eileen Quinlan was most definitely inspirational to listen to her discuss her passion for her work and how she sees the world. The fact that we get to view this passion in her work is truly something magical for me.