Erol Scott Harris USA, b. 1989
PIEL 11.11, 2022
Mixed media on linoleum, vinyl, and vellum
96 x 54 in
243.8 x 137.2 cm
243.8 x 137.2 cm
8554
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This seemingly abstract composition by Erol Scott Harris is a record of physical impressions the artist made on the surface with his bare flesh. He created the work by dipping...
This seemingly abstract composition by Erol Scott Harris is a record of physical impressions the artist made on the surface with his bare flesh. He created the work by dipping his body in pigment then pressing his flesh against strips of vinyl and linoleum flooring. The performative painting process involves Harris repeatedly lowering himself onto the painted surfaces via a series of ropes and pulleys suspended from the ceiling of his studio. For Harris, art is an arena in which to uncover how he can work with the body. Motivated variously by his connection to the narratives of his past and his desire to break free from them, he constructs situations in his studio that contain both structure and potentialities. Outcomes are resolved as Harris performs intuitively within the situation with his physical form. “I feel that the landscape occupies the body as much as the body occupies the landscape,” Harris says. “I generate a narrative scene by using my body as a stamp. The surfaces upon which I leave marks are material vehicles for spirit.” Harris’s interest is in what is left after his body is no longer performing. The resulting image or object could be perceived as a relic of a performance, a concretion of a lived experience, or as a materialization of possibility. The linoleum surface of this piece relates to Harris’s ancestors on his mother’s side, who were vintners who migrated from Códoba, Spain, to Guanajuato and Zamora, México, to ultimately become railroad workers in Chicago. “They lived in a box car, and they laid linoleum flooring to make money,” Harris says. “My sheets of linoleum come partially from my grandfather’s leftovers.”