Not So Black & White

New York-based artist Adrienne calls her handmade photo collages “Architextures”. They are fragments of what we see all around us – bigger than life skyscrapers that became synonymous for this city of steel. Her work is a combination of her lifelong involvement with both silver-based photography and collage, as discrete and separate practices. Architextures is also a combination of hand-printed B&W photographs with cut-and assembled handwork.

While I was at her studio last month, I noticed that at first, her works appeared to be digital montages, but upon closer inspection they revealed a texture and layering inherent in the handmade pieces. While you’re looking at these images on the screen everything appeared 2-D, but seeing them up-close will bring these multiple buildings alive, and your eyes will most likely be drawn to follow their hypnotic forms. As a modernist, I admired her work a great deal. Partly because of their originality, but mostly because Adrienne Moumin is following the path of such contemporary artists like: Dinh Q. Le, Ray K. Metzker, John Stezaker, and Annette Messager.