Lorna Simpson (Brooklyn, 1960) is an American photographer and artist whose multifaceted practice is rooted in a continuous process of research, moving between found images, photography, and painterly language.<\/p>\n
Three Figures<\/em>, like many of her works, is an imposing piece that confronts the viewer with its scale and seems to demand attention and time. Twelve Claybord wood panels compose and decompose the image of three people \u2014 two women and a man \u2014 holding hands. All three look in the same direction, yet move towards the opposite one. Nothing around them is recognizable: everything is blurred and indistinct, reminiscent of the settings of dreams, where details resist being brought into focus.
\nOnce the story behind the work is revealed, however, this chaos begins to take shape. Three Figure<\/em>s is based on an archival photograph from the Associated Press, taken in 1963 during the historic civil rights protests in Birmingham, Alabama. The image captures a precise moment: police officers attempting to disperse a crowd of activists using high-pressure water hoses. Three people look in the same direction \u2014 towards the police water hoses \u2014 while moving in the opposite one, attempting to resist.
\nIt is an image that continues to speak to the tensions of the contemporary world today.
\nUsing ink and screenprinting, Simpson intervenes on the photographic print with a forceful gesture, almost as if to evoke the violence of the water cutting through the scene. The surface of the image thus becomes a site of chaos, confusion, and fear, but also of the strength of resistance.
\nThe twelve panels, however, are not aligned: they compose and decompose the image through their own misalignment. On the right-hand side of the work, the geometric continuity is interrupted as three panels slide downwards. The third figure is thereby separated from the other two, and the human chain formed by their joined hands is broken, as is the line \u2014 almost an horizon \u2014 that their hands seem to trace.
\nIt is precisely this misalignment that creates a sense of imbalance. The image seems on the verge of giving way, generating a form of physical tension in the viewer: positioned outside the scene, we find ourselves leaning towards the three figures, almost as if trying to hold them up.
\nThree Figures<\/em> is therefore an artwork built around tension: a tension that runs through both the image and the painterly device through which it is constructed. Simpson brings different visual repertoires into dialogue \u2014 archival photographs, painting, screenprinting, and a range of materials \u2014 transforming them into an unstable surface in which the violence of history and that of the artistic gesture ultimately overlap.<\/p>\n