VISUAL AND CRITICAL STUDIES

Things I have been doing recently

And Then She’s Like/ And He Goes

I am curating an exhibition called And Then She’s Like/ And He Goes for A+D Gallery at Columbia College in Chicago.

It opens on August 9 and runs through September 15, with a closing reception on September 6.

And Then She’s Like/ And He Goes combines text-based visual art with language-based sound art. The visual pieces in the exhibition emphasize the audible qualities that hand rendered letterforms add to image-text, and the audio pieces play with the visual potential of sound.

Invited Artists
Deb Sokolow, Mark Addison Smith, Tony Lewis, Anne Vagt, and Chris Campe
Jana Sotzko and Elen Flügge

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My M.A. Thesis is entitled "Why Not Think About Illustration" and consists of three essays about contemporary illustration practice from a Visual Studies perspective. If you would like to read it, send me an email, I'd be happy to send you a PDF.

Abstract

Why Not Think About Illustration

Contemporary Illustration from a Visual Studies Perspective

This thesis makes a contribution to the emerging field of “illustration scholarship” from the interdisciplinary perspective of Visual Studies. The three chapters add to a self-reflexive discussion of contemporary illustration with a focus on questions of representation, identity formation and power relations. In my dual role as an illustrator and scholar in Visual Studies, I examine the practice of illustrators working today, theorize illustrations as a specific kind of image, and contextualize the professional field of illustration.

In the first chapter – It’s Not a Dirty Word: The Gendering of “Mere Illustration” – I analyze some of the discourse around the term illustration and its ‘bad reputation’ in art historical and fine art contexts. In these contexts the phrase “mere illustration” is frequently used to point out that a work is not art. I disassemble the mechanics of this manner of distinguishing ‘art-art’ from illustration by bridging the history of illustration with the contemporary use of the expression “mere illustration.” The implied meanings of the phrase reflect ideas about women and gender that were common in the late 19th century when illustration first became a profession in the US. In the phrase “mere illustration” these antiquated notions live on and serve to reinforce a gendered hierarchy between fine art and illustration by associating illustration with traits socially coded as feminine.

The second chapter – Unspectacular Revisions: Visual Normativity in Commercial Illustration – relates theories of visual representations specifically to the practice of illustrators and the decision-making it involves. I introduce the term “visual normativity” to reference the normative forces exerted by images and on images. First, “visual normativity” means the impact images have in constituting realities, and second it refers to the adjustments illustrators’ clients request to commissioned images. I explain the first meaning with the help of theories of visual representation and illustrate the second with before-and-after examples of illustrations that represent gender and other aspects of identity.

Finally, in Got Style?: Illustration Style and Personal Expression I examine the relationship between style and content in illustration. Even though style and content are known to be indissolvable, their opposition is alive and well. In illustration style is not only the illustrator’s ‘unique selling point,’ but it functions as the realm of personal expression in a field constrained by the demands of clients. Illustration style complicates the binary of style and content: it is not superficial but defines and frames the content of an image. In this essay, I delineate how technological developments have impacted style, and how romantic notions of artistic expression collide with the working realities of illustrators in the issue of style.

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Illustration Theory on Facebook

I founded a facebook group for Illustration Theory. It's small but great people are part of it, so please join us, too!

Illustration Theory Group on Facebook

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Published Article

My article "drawing queer space – the kind of activism drawings do"
has been published in issue 4, October 2011 of Shift: Graduate Journal of Visual and Material Culture

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Hamburg Alphabet – my book available in the US

My book Hamburg Alphabet is now available at Printed Matter in New York City, you can order online it through them!

Here is a link to Hamburg Alphabet's website

For updates on the book and related events, like Hamburg Alphabet on Facebook.

HAMBURG ALPHABET a collection of shop sign typography in Hamburg, Germany

Chris Campe, HAMBURG ALPHABET

96 pages, 220 images, bilingual introduction german/english

Publisher: Junius Verlag, Hamburg

published october 2010

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Presented Paper on Queer Life Drawing

I presented a paper titled "Queering Life Drawing: Sexuality, Queer Failure and the In-Between"

during the panel Poetics of/as Queer Performance, at Queertopia 4.0, Northwestern University Queer Pride Graduate Student Conference

on May 29 at Northwestern University Law School.

Queertopia 4.0, queer(ing) poetics: text, method, movement, thought.
Northwestern University Queer Pride Graduate Student Conference, May 27 – 29, 2011

Tentative Schedule: http://groups.northwestern.edu/queerpride/
Panels free/open to the public @ NU Law School, 350 E Chicago Ave.

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Presented Paper on Drawing as Queer Visual Activism

I presented a paper titled "drawing queer space – the kind of activism drawings do"

at Concordia University in Montreal on March 12, 2011.

Making Space / Créer l’espace

A Graduate Conference on the Shifting Concept of Space in Studies of Art and Visual Culture

The Art History Graduate Student Association of Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
March 11 & 12, 2011

http://ahgsa.concordia.ca/index.php/annual-graduate-conference

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Project about Queer and Drawing

queeristics is a drawing and research project about images and making them, about stereotypes, representation and visual norms.

Using superpositions and omissions, sampling, collaging, quotes and handdrawn typography I keep my drawings open to various interpretations. With the help of the space between text and drawing I aim to create slight confusion and this way hope to challenge the viewers’ ideas and “activate” them into figuring out explanations of their own. Against this background of thought I launched queeristics. With this project I am looking for ways to have my interest for theory be reflected in my drawings and to use my drawings as a basis for theoretical reflection about images.

queeristics – drawn from a queer perspective

that's not art! you can't even see anything!

Home Improvement (2009)

Hey you! (2009)