Piece of Work
Erika Kjorlie takes auto worship to the next level with a series of photo transfers showing parts of custom cars in antique-looking colors and deckled edges.
By Rachel Koper, Fri., Oct. 31, 2003
Dead Man's Curve
Photo transfer on paper, by Erika Kjorlie"The Heart's Eye" at Studio2Gallery, through Nov. 8
Custom cars are big in Austin, and photographing them is delightful, if you can pick out the really cool parts. Erika Kjorlie takes auto worship to the next level with this series of photo transfers. Her photography is strong, with antique-looking colors and deckled edges adding delicacy to the heavy-metal subject matter.
In "The Heart's Eye," a small group show at Studio2 Gallery, Kjorlie presents eight small works on paper, but these are more than glossy rockabilly lifestyle advertisements. Kjorlie makes one-of-a-kind photo transfers. Shot with a large-format Polaroid, each print is about three inches. Once a well-framed image comes out, it is suspended in solution where it exists for a few minutes as a gelatinous mass. From this humble and delicate state, it is dragged over a sheet of paper, during which the photo wrinkles and tears, creating unique edges. This tricky way of making art demands a patient temperament: A good Polaroid can bunch up or tear and become unsalvageable. It's easy to get a feeling of the suspense intrinsic to this delicate and temporal process.
Dead Man's Curve is one hell of a stylish print. Thick white paper holds a dramatically cropped chrome taillight from an Impala -- portraitlike. When I asked Kjorlie about this particular work, she said, "God made it." She was referring to the parallel wrinkles along the fin of the car extending off the edge of the photo. Unintentionally perfect, they work within the composition of the photo and give it an extra texture and grace.
