Black Bars: Déjeuner No. 27 (Girl with Gerber Daisy, Crocus, Rubber Plant, Log and Key Float)

Imposing black bars screen-printed on the inside surfaces of the acrylic glass panes separate the viewer from the images behind them. Blocking the images in their totality, the black bars deny access to the illusions of pleasure beyond, focusing attention on the immediate physical properties of the object before the viewer: the reflectivity of acrylic glass, the textures of the painted substrate within the frame, and the colors and qualities of the ink that makes up the images. Andrews’s command of printing techniques allows her to imbue two-dimensional forms with a palpable sense of weight. As the viewer moves towards the images and begins to decode them, they break down into their constituent material parts.
Black Bars draws its title from an ongoing series of wall-based works inspired by Manet’s landmark painting Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe, in which a picnic scene is imbued with disconcerting sexual tension and jarring incongruities of scale. Andrews uses these themes as a fulcrum in order to address the deep-running connections between image and desire in the Western cultural canon. Random screen-printed assortments of objects that symbolize easy pleasure and leisure activity surround the faces of young women on a white painted ground, updating Manet’s spread with a more contemporary and at times comedic language that could be seen as reminiscent of fashion advertising. While some imagery is licensed, much is in fact produced in photo shoots arranged by the artist herself. By recreating what would otherwise pass as stock images, Andrews situates her own authorship within a system whose commercial motives are defined by conscious and unconscious expressions of desire, calling attention to ways in which the human subject can be rendered––and function––as a prop.