Pow

Work on Paper

-

DePaul Art Museum

Name/Title

Pow

Entry/Object ID

2019.09

Description

Blue/purple/pink fingerprint pattern painted on cut paper and placed in a exploding formation

Artwork Details

Medium

acrylic paint on cut Stonehenge paper

Context

Beginning in 1990, following the accidental destruction of an installation Temkin had prepared that featured an etching of her hand into rock, she began a two-decade long series of paintings and collages based on her own fingerprint. These works are representational, as they attempt to replicate her own fingerprint, but also veer into the abstraction in which Temkin was originally trained. The fingerprint motif both signifies identity and difference as the complex pattern is unique to each individual and is a kind of natural etching on our fingers, but which therefore renders us different from one another. Pow, which reconstructs the artist’s fingerprint with painted strips collaged together, evokes a fragmentation at the heart of the identical and the singular. In this work identity and non-identity, sameness and difference, self and other are blurred. ""Pow" is one in a decade-long series of works on paper that focuses on my greatly enlarged left index fingerprint. A fingerprint is "THE" ultimate personal signature. It is uniquely my own and at the same time, anonymous and universal. In "Pow," the fingerprint image has been fractured and reassembled. It is a self-portrait of my identity, so to speak, with psychological implications. The image is created in a swirling collage of paper shards. The raised surface of the collage feels like Braille and this 3-dimensional element further accentuates the idea of the fractured, reassembled fingerprint." - Temkin

Acquisition

Accession

2019.09

Source or Donor

Merle Temkin

Acquisition Method

Gift

Credit Line

Gift of the artist

Made/Created

Artist

Merle Temkin

Date made

2007

Ethnography

Notes

Chicago American

Inscription/Signature/Marks

Type

Signature

Location

Verso

Transcription

'Merle Temkin, 2007'

Notes

Inscription Type: purple marker

Lexicon

Getty AAT

Concept

fingerprints, environmental artists, artists (visual artists), people (agents), self-portraits, portraits, visual works (works), identity, metaphysical concepts, philosophical concepts, collages (visual works)

Hierarchy Name

Conditions and Effects (hierarchy name), People (hierarchy name), Visual Works (hierarchy name), Visual and Verbal Communication (hierarchy name), Associated Concepts (hierarchy name)

Facet

Physical Attributes Facet, Agents Facet, Objects Facet, Associated Concepts Facet

Dimensions

Dimension Description

overall

Width

26 in

Length

33 in