The Lattice Fence

There was a fence with spaces you
Could see through if you wanted to.

An architect who saw this thing
Stood there one summer evening,

Took out the spaces with great care
And built a castle in the air.

The fence was utterly dumbfounded:
Each post stood there with nothing round it

A sight most terrible to see.
(They charged it with indecency)

The architect then ran away
To Africa – or – Americay

Christian Morgenstern -1905
(Trans. from German, R. F. C. Hull)

My projects revolve around a central paradox: the improbable freedom of expression in purely abstract forms and disillusion in representing possibilities of reality through photographic depictions. To better understand this paradox, I explore in painting the poetics of geometry, fluidity, and intimacy together with observations of places, objects, and events. My compositions originate from collections in my daily journal of deliberate notations and chance encounters. As a means of reconciling a perplexing and often an overload of accumulative information, I make projects that merge self-expression with found representations.

Joan Snitzer

Joan Snitzer