Tachisme

Justine Varga’s work ruptures any distinction between photography and painting. In Tachisme, Varga explores the activity of decipherment in photographs and its relation to inscription, meaning and knowledge.

Varga’s film negatives are smeared and stained with pigment during long exposures. When these negatives are printed large-scale, the latent inscriptions reveal artist’s fingertips, a trace of touching generally forbidden in photographic production. Varga sees her photography as a drawing with light, or as a lightsensitive substrate on which she makes marks or allows the world to leave marks. These photographs highlight practice that is physical and chemical, autobiographical and contingent, painterly and photographic.