Joan Kaufman Suspended

“Suspended” is a photo/video installation of
constructed fiction. Using would-be circus
performers as subjects, “Suspended” explores the
boundaries between illusion and reality capturing
private scenes of performance in which desire for
the impossible prevails. Caught in desperate and
absurd situations, solitary acts of magic and
illusion do not entertain, but instead isolate the
characters in a private and unending cycle of
performing. Images of suspension conflate
opposites: freedom and confinement, determination
and futility, bravery and crippling inaction.
With references to metaphorical and allegorical
principles, “Suspended” recalls the myth of Icarus
who flew too close to the sun and Sisyphus who
unwittingly is condemned to an endless purgatory.
Like Lucky and Vladamir these individuals are
confined to an absurd reality with no beginning
and no end, just endless and determined repetition
with darkly amusing results.