“My camera, here, is merely the form of documentation while the fruit starts to become the negative, holding time and light in its skin for us to see. Youth only lasts so long. Life sets in. We are shaped from the beginning. And while lemons are pretty to look at, they are also bitter to taste.”, Chad Pitman.
In Chad Pitman’s new body of work COLOR & FIGURES the still life genre is reconsidered through the serial capture of one of the medium’s most popular subjects: fruit. Unlike familiar still life, however, Pitman’s images are subject to time. Over the course of a year, the artist regularly photographed the same pieces of fruit as they decomposed against backgrounds of a complimentary hue. While clearly photographs, Pitman’s works are very much painterly in their composition and suggestive of a highly considered process in the overall congruence of the series. The deconstruction of the signifier (in this case the fruit) into something new entirely brings to light a new language. When seen together as a complete story, these images communicate the delicacy of a moment while also reconsidering standards of beauty. In Pitman’s photographs decomposition becomes appealing as it is seen mostly for its resulting color and form; the process documented is not a transition into an end but a transition into permanence as art.
Chad Pitman (b. 1981) attended the New England School of Photography in Boston. He has shown at Cash Machine in Los Angeles, CA and Slow Culture in Los Angeles, CA. He has published two art books entitled Valley Pines and Waves Asphalt Light.