Accession Number
2009/1.469.1-7

Title
Untitled

Artist(s)
Ernestine Ruben

Object Creation Date
2009

Medium & Support
inkjet prints on fabric

Dimensions
154 ½ in x 44 in (392.43 cm x 111.76 cm);154 ½ in x 44 in (392.43 cm x 111.76 cm);154 ½ in x 44 in (392.43 cm x 111.76 cm);78 in x 44 in (198.12 cm x 111.76 cm);64 in x 44 in (162.56 cm x 111.76 cm);35 in x 44 in (88.9 cm x 111.76 cm);142 ½ in x 44 in (361.95 cm x 111.76 cm);113 in x 44 in (287.02 cm x 111.76 cm)

Credit Line
Museum commission made possible with support of the artist

Label copy
Ernestine Ruben's approach to photography has always been restlessly experimental, and her longstanding effort to "free the photograph from the wall" has consistently led her to unconventional photographic processes, materials, and forms. In this installation, designed especially for this space, the University of Michigan alumna (B.A. History of Art, 1953) has produced a complex, layered work in which multiple skins reveal themselves as the viewer moves through the space they create. Known for her photographic investigations into the shape of the human body, Ruben's work seen here engages with the natural world in its most elemental forms, from the firlmly corporeal - earth, water, flora - to the transient and immaterial - mist, fire, even light itself.

Printing on semi-transparent fabric coupled with the artist's decision to severely crop her images produces an effect of semi-abstraction. Consequently, it can take a moment to realize that we are seeing a network of branches and leaves or the patterns of light reflected on the surface of water. In slowing the process by which we apprehend these enigmatic fragments, Ruben encourages us to do the same as we move through the natural world. 

Subject matter
These seven banners were created for the new Frankel wing of the museum and installed in the stairway between the second and third floors. Ruben's experimental approach to photography, with printing on semi-transparent fabric and sharp cropping of the images, creates a complex layered work in which multiple views reveal themselves as the viewer moves down the stairs. Though the subject of these scenes is naturalistic - rocks, water, fire, vegetation- there is an abstract quality to these forms.

Physical Description
This work consists of seven photographic prints on semi-transparent fabric, gradually increasing in length, that hang from the sloping ceiling of a stairway in the Frankel Wing. Each panel of fabric has a different image including, craggy rocks, tree branches against the sky, sunlight reflecting on water and marshland, flames of fire and cloud like formations. Four are black and white images and the three others are color prints.

Primary Object Classification
Photograph

Primary Object Type
abstract

Additional Object Classification(s)
Mixed Media

Collection Area
Photography

Rights
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please visit http://umma.umich.edu/request-image for more information and to fill out the online Image Rights and Reproductions Request Form. Keywords
metamorphic rock
sunlight
water (inorganic material)