People, Places, Things: Intersubject- and Interobject-ivity in Dorit Cypis's Angel of Histories

Amelia Jones is Professor in the Department of History of Art at University of California, Riverside

…In a sea of mirrors mounted on goosenecks, craning to accommodate the fleshy expanse of our bodies and faces yet relentlessly fragmenting them into an abyss of parts, we "see" ourselves. But our image snaps into focus only when we advance into this field of reflection; from afar, because they are concave magnifying mirrors, they show only the space around them, flipped upside down. Similarly, a number of large-scale wood panels, their grain marked with undulating waves of sheep's wool, have tiny magnifying mirrors lodged in their surface. As we move to investigate their minuscule, jewel-like shimmering surfaces we find ourselves again refracted, fragmented, distorted. On a bathroom scale we stand, thinking to register our density. As we may or may not realize, however, a small lens embedded in the face of the scale films our bodies from ground up and projects them elsewhere in the gallery -- against a billowing cloth field of representation. The projected body divides from the weighted body, representation from material; and yet each is intimately dependent on the other.

In Angel of Histories, as in Cypis's earlier works such as X-Rayed (Altered), we are made aware of the simultaneous density and ephemerality of our bodies, our flesh. We move through the space of the installation and experience ourselves both as bodies (weighty, space-taking) and as surface or representation (we are reflections, animated versions of social subjects). "People" are negotiated multiply as images, things, and fully cognizant social subjects in Cypis's project.

At the same time, in Cypis's Angel of Histories places become animated and subjectified. The gallery is "peopled" by objects that reciprocate our subjectivity as we engage them: mirrors, scales, video lenses, screen -- all surfaces that suck in and spit out some aspect of our embodiment…