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Carey has said, "In a sense, when one looks at my images they are
in effect seeing a double portrait: the external self (photograph)
and the internal self (marks)." Carey uses white paint on photographs
such as Leaning Into the White, partially because it imitates
the reversal of light found in photographic negatives. Carey does
not intend her painted marks to be expressive; rather, she is enhancing
the dimensions of the photograph, lending it stylistic flamboyance.
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G. Roger Denson, Forms, Figures, Expressions, 1981, Albright/CEPA/Hallwalls
catalog
"The processes of photography and painting serve as Carey's primary
concern, with the figure/ground relationship only secondary. This
particular insight into Carey's priorities enables one to make sense
of her ability to fuse both a classicist's distance and an expressionist's
ambitious dynamic onto one body of work...Carey's models demonstrate
such order by their very idealization. Their grace, poise and particularly,
their relationship with the pictorial plane all give evidence to
the deliberate and calculating order of Carey's aesthetics...The
tonal boundaries of carey's photography are also extended by additions
of white paint, airbrush sprays and dark inks. Carey claims that
particularly by adding white, 'a luminosity appears at once celestial,
referring to a stellar quality and at the same time imitates the
reversal of light found in photographic negatives. Thus the effects
of white paint on a dark background add dimension...'...carey chooses
rather to employ the aesthetic strategy of the Pop artists of the
1960s and subsequent Minimalists. Her work is devoid of any psychological
revelation, which is not to belittle her. Carey is far more interested
in exploring her own inner need to trace what have been considered
by aestheticians since Plato to be the idyllic dimensions and proportions
of a subject...she remains a classicist."
Carey quote (same source as above):"...in a sense, when one
looks at my images they are in effect seeing a double portrait:
the external self (photograph) and the internal self (marks)."
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