In literally rescuing his own photographs from the printing process, Ari Rossner refashioned his original images. The retracing of the process of his images, is in this context, a radical turn for both the artist and the image. As he has portrayed them – the icons – are misunderstood and as such, a duality is set up between the manufacture and re-appropriation of the image. The photographer’s attitude, in facing his own images, seeks to deny the norms that govern the world of appearance. Presentation, thereby, undermines the codes of representation, and in liberating them with an aggressive gesture, he liberates a powerful intention to deviate from « rules ». By reclaiming a less visible, in fact, secret aspect of the image is an invitation to remake the image for both the photographer and the viewer. In repainting, and re-covering these images, he brings them towards the very limits of legibility and therefore loss; placing the images at a distance through the printing process and paint, their presence becomes less evident, less obvious. The image, then, no longer attempts to seduce us as it can no longer give of itself. But Ari Rossner invites us to go looking for it, inducing us to penetrate what is there more deeply, and in so doing, grasping its visible structures.
The colors, rather than finding their way to the raised surfaces of the plates, invade the entire object. This plate of aluminum, instead of dying a death as the residue of industrial processes in the path towards « becoming » an image, becomes the object and subject of the portrait, interrupting the manufacturing chain. Far from the fragility of paper, a vibrant metal base provides a physical presence that is totally new. Once reinvented, covered, reincarnated, these plates are at the same time breaking the reproduction chain, and the image, finding a second life, becomes unique.