Hamilton artist Liss Platt’s photographs invoke Minimalist/Colour Field Painting and Op Art, but with a sweet and playful twist. Here the patterns and grids are formed by organized arrangements of geometric candies associated with childhood. Appealing to both the soothing role of sugar snacks and desires for order, routine, balance, and familiarity, this contrast of sweets and structure challenges the values often highly gendered that are attached to different comfort-seeking practices. Viewers are invited to reflect further on their own objects and experiences of comfort in an interactive web component where they can share their own stories of comfort/discomfort and design their own candy patterns.
Documentation
Artist Bio
LISS PLATT is a media artist whose works take the form of videotapes, films, photographs, web sites, performances, and installations. Her artwork combines personal narrative, critical analysis, humour, and gender politics to explore the way various representations (popular, subcultural, artistic) inform our understanding of ourselves within the world.
Platt’s work has been screened and exhibited throughout the United States, Canada and Europe, at such venues as The Whitney Museum and the New Museum (New York City), Akademie der Knste (Berlin), The San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Film Festival (San Francisco), The Wexner Center (Ohio), and Gallerie SAW Gallery (Ottawa). She had a retrospective screening at Millennium Film Workshop (New York City) in 2002 and a solo exhibition and puck painting performance at Stride Gallery (Calgary) in 2003. She has received grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, the Experimental Television Center, and the Ontario Arts Council. Currently an Associate Professor of Multimedia at McMaster University, she lives and works in Hamilton, ON.
This project was made possible with support from:
The Ontario Arts Council, The Daimon Centre for Production of New Media,
Artengine, Arts Research Board, McMaster University.
Photography assistant: K. Jennifer Bedford
Flash integration and programming: Chris McAllister
Featured in YYZINE: VOLUME 7, ISSUE 4