Reflecting on the motif of painting with a title. One of the soft critiques I have of the book is that, despite its holistic considerations and the fundamental declarations of artist and publisher working closely together to create a special object, the title leaves something less than imaginable. It is somewhat self-referential regarding the artist’s activities in the medium. It sadly disappoints the workd that has been created in teh book, which is clearly indicative of the publisher finding a way to to push the material into a new realm with the overflow of images and the golden halcyon printing in which bodies, cavort, are silhouetted, and asked to bear the grace of light in amplitude defining not only humanity, but also Brazilian leisure life centered around the beach in what appears to be Rio. Titles can adjust our complete attitude toward the world crafted within books. I’ll admit this is one of the first times a title’s lack of imagination has caught me off guard, given the work inside is pretty amazing.
The production of the book has a vitality reminiscent of Stanley/Barker’s production of Trent Parke’s Monument in all its iterations. This work still stands out as one of the decade’s defining titles. Though 10 Years adds the element of accordion binding, a significant feat in a job this size, one cannot help but notice that the size, leatherbound, and debossed cover closely resembles Parke’s title. However, this does not imply copying ideas found elsewhere. Still, as someone who wades through as many books as I do, it feels fair to suggest this observation. The silhouetting of bodies inside also resonates with Parke’s work, making me wonder if Australian light feels similar to Brazilian light. It would make sense in terms of hemispheres.
As for the images themselves, the book is painted with a type of gold dust, printed with gold over black, and sewn together to create an immersive world-building experience on both sides of the leporello folds. Though Leporello, by their very insistence, creates a state of user interface, the work here can be read in a paginated way if one takes time, which I prefer in this case. The paginated read gives me a bit more time with the images themselves, and when opened into the full leporello, presents a more cinematic and flowing read of the work, which also invokes moving images, in which, due to the negative inversion and silhoutting of Cattaneo Adorno’s images, all the world she has built with Radius/Hickey to intensify. It becomes a rolling type of viewing that reminds one of waves crashing along shorelines before retreating to the gravity from which they came.
Thinking of the precedents for the artist’s images, my immediate conclusion after Parke was Mona Kuhn, whose later work has also gone through phases of negative inversion and has become silvery, if not golden, in many adaptations. That said, what is more interesting for me, at least, is that Cattaneo Adorno is not dolefully locked into tight portraiture on repetition, instead opting to use the world and her ability to observe to sculpt out images of people in their environment. Though both share an artifice of sorts with the manipulation of their imagery, I find Cattaneo Adorno shares more in common with Brazilian photography in the twentieth century, a legacy humming along in her work. Geraldo de Barros comes to mind, as do other lesser luminaries of the Fotoclubismo movement from the mid-century. In reference to de Barros, to be clear, it is the geometry and concrete approach to photography that I find hinted at here in Cattaneo Adorno’s work, more than the humanistic appeal of the work. Some of this, no doubt, has to do with how the images have been translated into book form.
In conclusion, the book is very well-executed, and I believe that it has elevated the artist’s work into a new dimension. Though the initial images are strong, they seem to find a better home in their aggregate than as single images. In an exhibition of this material, I feel the overwhelming nature of the leporella, if translated to the wall, would be very successful.