Shedding Light on Art

There’s something altogether subversive about Tim Davis’ work, now on display in his Permanent Collection exhibition at the Knoxville Museum of Art. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it at first — I was surrounded by actual-size photographed of paintings, many of them recognizable icons of canonical Western art. Every image was entirely transformed by intrusive light reflections cast on the gloss varnish of their surfaces. I sensed that the same impulse that motivates artists to produce graffiti — the impulse to vandalize — was lurking in Davis’ collection. He’s said, after all, that he loves to do what he’s not supposed to do.

Reaction to his work has been amusing. A guest at his KMA gallery talk, after spending all her time eating and talking in the hallway, actually asked Davis if the works were photographs — after he had already been introduced as a photographer. One University of Tennessee professor speculated that Davis might actually hate paintings. My own reaction was that he was simply having fun, engaging in a defiant exercise to redefine what the original artist wanted you to see.

Davis started Permanent Collection by chance. He was working on a series of political photos; one shot of a painted political portrait of the sort that hang in county courthouses all over the country had a huge glowing reflection on its surface. From that study, Permanent Collection was born. All his work, in fact, starts with an observation. The meaning of the observation emerges later.

The light reflections in Davis’ work are from museum windows and available lighting; he has never used a flash. He’s been arrested multiple times for trespassing during his continuous attempts to get the images he wanted, but museums now routinely give him permission to spend hours unsupervised in their galleries. Once inside, he lugs his  large-format view camera on its tripod while he crawls around on the floor, trying to find just the right oblique angle for a light that will render a visual icon of Western civilization into something bizarre and defiantly transformed.  

Some of his results may have conservators gasping in horror. Imperfections jump out at the viewer — cracks in paint appear monumental. Indeed, conservators actually use a similar technique to examine pieces in their collections for damage. Two of the most extreme examples of damage Davis has captured are in a portrait of Ellen McClung Berry and a 19th-century portrait of Major Edward Gifford. In the former, though, the paint is in good shape, but the canvas itself sags on its stretcher bars in the lower right corner, exaggerated by the dark shadows that outline the folds. There are strong vertical slashes made by uneven varnish, giving the effect of an action painting. The Gifford painting demonstrates why you never let people who hate you get hold of your portrait — Gifford’s canvas face is in pieces, slashed repeatedly by a knife. Davis’s photo captures the white reflections contrasting with the dark empty space behind the mutilated canvas, outlining the curved slashes so effectively that they appear three-dimensional.

The installation of this provocative exhibit in the KMA ironically resulted in museum registrar/preparator Matthew Carroll laboriously adjusting the lighting to eliminate glare.

Davis works with both film and digital equipment. Many of his photos are wide-bed Epson prints. He mounts them onto PVC foam and treats the fronts with a lamination process so the pictures don’t need glass. It’s as if the glass would compete with his own use of light.

TIM DAVIS’ PERSONAL COLLECTION
Through July 8
Knoxville Museum of Art (1050 World’s Fair Park Drive)