Untitled
Artist
Andreas Rentsch
(Swiss, born 1963)
Date2009
MediumUnique Type 55 Polaroid negative
Dimensions4 × 5 in. (10.2 × 12.7 cm)
ClassificationsPhotography
Credit LineMuseum purchase
Object number2016.5.2
DescriptionUnique sepia toned Polaroid Type 55 negative measuring 4 x 5 inches mounted to mat board. Board signed by the artists an inscribed in pencil: from the series “Entangled with Justice” / 2009 / 1/1 / Unique Polaroid Negative. Board mounted to larger backing, also inscribed in pencil (in another hand): Andreas Rentsch / “Entangled with Justice” / 2009 / Image #4. Untitled (2009) is from Rentsch’s most recent series, Entangled with Justice. In this series Rentsch draws from both his childhood experience and recent political events, merging personal memory with anxieties about contemporary international affairs. To create this work, Rentsch begins by “light writing” on Polaroid film. To do so he opens the shutter of his camera in a darkened room and then uses a small light to trace the contours of his own body in various poses—what he describes as a work of performance art. The film captured the drawn figures, which form narratives about the treatment of prisoners. Rentsch uses Polaroid Type 55 film, which contains its own processing chemicals and results in a positive and negative sheet. Rather than processing the film according to the manufacturer’s specifications, however, Rentsch physically manipulates the film and then sets it aside for weeks or months, allowing the processing chemicals to continue to work and decay, which results in unexpected and highly abstract imagery. He then tones and manipulates the positive and negative sheets, creating singular objects, using the medium to suggest themes of uncertainty and vulnerability, all of which emphasizes his ideas about incarceration and abuse.
