Holographic 'Hybrids' and 'Surrogates'...
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EXHIBITIONS of works on this site: |
Holographic and sculptural art by Al Razutis - Visual Alchemy 1976-1985
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Holographic 'hybrids' is a term used by Al Razutis to identify the combination of sculpture (original or found-object assemblage) and holograms/holographic images and their resulting 'hybrid' aesthetics (holographic, post-modern, modern, classical). The sculptural nature of the holographic (virtual or real) image, the fact that it occupies 'space' and displays 'object' characteristics (size, proportion, perspective, depth), the fact that the holographic image 'floats' and is free from 'gravity' are paradoxical and poetic to those who pursue the surrealisms of 'phantasmic objects' and the 'marvelous', or kitch and post-modern commentary/construction. In other words, these works are not about parlor 'magic' illusions but a 'dance with phantasms' and memory, cultural and personal. 
This seeminly 'illogical' condition (an object floating, free from gravity) has been inspirational to generations of holographic artists. It is of course related to a fascination with 'magic' (illusions, levitations) and of course has been trivialized by some trinket manufacturers to entice a audience interested in buying novelties ('how did they do that?'). It is also related to the 'marvelous' contained in surrealist works, but this relation is also a point of departure. The focus of this page is the works of Razutis. Hybrid holography has also been featured in the poetic works of Anait, the narrative works of Dan Schweitzer, the dream works of Steve Weinstock, the metaphysical and assemblage works of John Kaufman, and others. It is no longer that the holographic 'image' is complete in and of itself, but that the work refers to the holographic 'image' in relation to its 'container' or physical counterpart (the sculpture, or installation). In Razutis' works, the holographic hybrids can be allegorical, narrative, surrealist, didactic or metaphysical and alchemical notations. In his early essay, Some Notes on the Art of Holography (1979, Franklin Institute Press), Razutis provides a lengthy description of 'hybrid' holography in terms of didacticism, surrealism and the limitations of 'mimetic' or 'display' holographic aesthetics.
ENIGMAS AND 'EFFIGIES':The holographic image is part enigma, part physical science. It is enigmatic to artists who, upon discovering a effigy of an object suspended behind the plate, or projecting in front of the plate, in space, are dissatisfied with mere 'physical' explanations (diffraction, geomteric optics) and wish to participate in the creations of a 'marvelous' alternative to physical representation. Just think: to 'refashion the real' in ways that were previously impossible. In ways that combines traces of 'both real and unreal'. And some of the works arising from these impulses are didactic: they comment on 'the real' by creating 'unreal containers for the real', or conversely 'the unreal contained within the real'. SURREALIST 'MARVELOUS' CAUGHT IN THE REFLECTION...
Andre Breton's essay "Crisis of the Object" (1936) drew analogies between "concrete irrationality" in art with qualities of "mathematical objects", "poetic objects" and objects appearing in dreams. The surrealist war against surface representation was an attempt to liberate the imagination from habit and convention, to encourage one to seek meaning beneath the surface. Breton's convictions were that "there is more to be found in the hidden real than in the immediate known quantity". To attack the habitual is to "make it strange". To revitalize our sense of life and the 'real' is to enploy 'poetic displacement of subject and object' . Rene Magritte himself could have pronounced: 'This is not a object!'
The holographic image is 'unreal' - you can't touch, smell, taste or hear it. It's a visual ghost of a recording stage or object. It exhibits no gravity, only focal properties. In combination with the world of objects, with sculptures, frames, planes and reflections, it can occupy what I termed 'hybrid' status. The combination of the surreal and the real creates a dialogue about what is 'real', how images occupy memory, how solid and immaterial exchange places. The framed, installed, sculpted results of these 'hybrids' is one of the early accomplishments of a new art medium like holography asserting its place beyond its predecessor art forms - beyond, but not disconnected. THE ALLEGORICAL MIND...
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Yesterday, we had a "crisis of the object"; today we can contemplate the absence of the object, and the many stories that are told concerning its wherabouts. For example, the whereabouts of - 'THE READY-MADE':
These historical precedents inform the directions that holographic art would take in the 70's and 80's. Some might claim they came upon it later 'by accident' - but no one could deny how tough it was to buck the tide of 'proper holographic imaging technique' standing in for art. The departure from mimetic-technical holograms in the early 70's was a phenomenon that I and others pioneered in our works and exhibitions. One can take it for granted today, because po-mo art and assemblage / collage are the artforms, but in the early 70's, the preponderance of 'technical imperatives' which afflicted holographic expressions (e.g. the mimetic hologram of a train judged by diffraction efficiency and bandwidth due to improved plate bleaching techniques announced in a SPIE conference and academic papers) were dominant reminders of 'where' this medium had come from: the lab. And it would have stayed in the lab, if not for the artists and the makers of 'beautiful fictions'. CATCH ME I'M FALLING
Interferometric Holograms
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