www.countereditions.com/escape-artist
Taken from her iconic series Escape Artist, Sam Taylor-Wood has produced a new print exclusively for Counter Editions—Escape Artist (Green and Red) (2010). Reminiscent of the artist’s earlier Self Portrait Suspended series, these photographs show the artist similarly suspended mid-air, in this case from brightly coloured helium balloons. “I have to hide my face in the pictures. It is a combination of hiding the grimacing pain—because I think that destroys the photograph—but it is also because I don’t think you need to see my face.” She said the pain was necessary as the photographs were a response to her fight against cancer. “I made them shortly after I was no longer referring to myself as an ill person,” she said. “There is a definite sense of physical freedom from the constraints of illness”. Indeed, there is an air of the escape artist, of the magician, to these works. The artist does seem to be performing a miraculous act of levitation. The balloons surely aren’t enough to stop her slumped descent to the hard ground below. And so what is holding her up? Perhaps nothing less than an act of faith.
Founded in 2000 Counter Editions commissions and produces prints and multiples by leading contemporary artists including John Baldessari, Rebecca Warren, Peter Doig, Roni Horn, Tracey Emin, and Chris Ofili.
44a Charlotte Road
London
EC2A 3PD
(+44) 020 7684 8888
mail [at] countereditions.com
Image courtesy of Counter Editions and the artist.
