Lot 75: ELISA SIGHACELLI (ITALIAN B. 1968)

Composition with Red and Yellow (From the series Havana)
Type C print on three light boxes, 2002, signed and dated in felt-tipped pen, inscribed with the title and numbered 1/3 (on the reverse of panel 1)
122 x 122 x 8 cm each

Melbourne, Cohan, Leslie and Browne at ACAF 2002, September 2002

Cohan, Leslie and Browne, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner

"The even distribution of light behind the surface of a color print mounted on a lightbox substantially enhances the intensity of an image. This electrically introduced experience of light is literal and undifferentiated, and the image remains more or less the sum of its parts. In Elisa Sighicelli's first New York exhibition (she showed at Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles, in 2001), the Turin-born, London-based photographer brings something new to the lightbox as support, inserting a localized, strategically placed, often horizontally expressed passage of generated light into each image. In the process, she heightens impact and broadens the possibilities of a previously conventional means of presentation.

Sighicelli showed quietly domestic images of unoccupied interiors she photographed this year in the course of a working visit to Cuba. All the photos are taken from a low vantage point. Looking upward, into and across the expanse of foreground, she assumes the perspective of a child wandering through the architecture and furnishings of an outsized world. With the camera placed slightly above highly polished planes of floor, each interior looms like an approaching storm. Uniformly mounted on shallow aluminum lightboxes (roughly 4 feet on a side and centered low on the gallery wall), the images are distinguished by single identifiable light sources specific to each composition, located within the image itself. Sighicelli adjusts the bands of light in the box to intensify these bright areas. She creates an effect that involves both the depiction of light inherent in the photograph itself and the literal experience of manipulated light.

Light appears at the juncture of a polished floor and a wall of patterned glass in the five-part Parlour. It is introduced in the middle distance at the point where curtains meet and are reflected on the satiny floor of Plant, and bursts through like daylight in the diptych Open Doors. In each case, a specific effect is made believable by means of an inventive adaptation of the low-technology light-box. The work produces a psychological effect that may include the sensation of foreboding, a result of a sensitive reading of perspective and scale. In these interiors, where no one moves among the chairs, tables, decorative objects and perhaps a solitary, wilting potted plant, there is the sense of time suspended. Sighicelli locates the pervasive feeling of nostalgia for something loved and left behind, as in a poem by Cavafy." (E Leffingwell, Elisa Sighicelli at Cohan Leslie and Browne, Art in America, October 2002)

A 10% Goods and Services tax (G.S.T) will be charged on the Buyer's Premium on all lots in this sale.