“Hodge-Podge” Abstract Bleached Photograph

Small bleached found abstract photographic artwork by Jim Dingilian. Offered framed in plexiglass.

Frame size: 5 x 6.25 inches Paper size: 3 3/8 x 4.75 inches

Jim Dingilian makes startlingly intimate images by eliminating elements of the original. He carefully bleaches out portions of vintage photographs in various decorative patterns. The new artwork looks like a psychedelic drawing; only once you get up close to it will you begin to see it as a photograph. His drawings are easily overlooked: small, seemingly ephemeral works on paper that could be mistaken for offhand studies or doodles. However, when seen up close, these pieces reveal an evocative and, in some instances, elaborate abstraction, the forms suggestive of traditional Western and Chinese landscapes, cityscapes, and crystal and leaf shapes.

Dingilian’s drawings are themselves ghosts, the ghosts of the original photographs. The lines in this piece are what remains of the photographic surface when the snapshot is dipped in bleach. Dingilian applies a resistive coating, which preserves the lines and contributes nothing to the finished work. Some interrelationships of erasure and selection are always at work in a drawing. The ghost figures, however, introduce an uncanny otherness in the compositions. This otherness is all the more evocative and intriguing because it is so resilient and, to some degree, independent of artistic control.

Photography, abstract art, abstract photography, black and white, monochrome, work on paper, contemporary art, conceptual art, photograph