Jeffu Warmouth

Slide Projections

Head Surrounded by Slides of Beef (Study After Bacon), 1993, chromogenic color print, 11 x 14 inches

This photograph is another one of Warmouth's early homages, this time to the Irish painter Francis Bacon and his Figure with Meat painting from 1954. Bacon's portraits often portrayed an isolated male subject, seated in an empty room with a blank backdrop. The faces of the men are fragmented and indistinguishable, as though they were painted when the subject was moving back and forth at a rapid speed. In a play on both Bacon's name and artistic style, Warmouth photographed the head of a friend, mimicking the facial fuzziness of the paintings with two slides of beef in the backdrop, just like in Bacon's original image.
- Mary Tinti, Fitchburg Art Museum

He Dreams About Samuel Beckett, 1993, chromogenic color print, 11 x 14 inches

Warmouth's early affinity for writer Samuel Beckett takes center stage in this photograph. Combining self-portraiture, projections, and layers of text, Warmouth's image is an homage to Beckett's prize-winning play, Waiting for Godot (1948-1949). Warmouth depicts himself as the two despairing protagonists (who wait and wait to no avail for a character named Godot) and offers up a more slapstick snapshot of this spare, desolate tragicomedy. On several conceptual levels, Warmouth and Beckett have much in common. They each exploit the limits of language, dabble in the absurd, understand the dark side of comedy, and - as exemplified by some of his video work - rely on minimalism to convey big, sometimes bleak ideas.
- Mary Tinti, Fitchburg Art Museum

Raspberry Jam, 1993, chromogenic color print, 11 x 14 inches, based on a 1992 poem by Theresa Montagna

Charming 1, 1993, chromogenic color print, 11 x 14 inches, based on a 1992 poem by Theresa Montagna