Mikhael SubotzkySticky-tape Transfer 17 – Discover The World's Finest Taste in Cigarettes, 2016 – 2019
Discover the World’s Finest Taste in Cigarettes forms part of Mikhael Subotzky’s series of sticky-tape transfers, which arise out of the artist’s continued attempt to understand the relationship between the physical and representational structure of images.
The work is derived from a wide variety of sources, including scanned images from Subotzky’s book collection, found images, sketches and photographs by the artist, as well as images of his personal history. The works are made by scanning, printing and collaging the source material, often combining these images with white-out tape and handwritten text excerpts. The works are then covered with a clear archival tape, which is subsequently removed taking strips of the image along with it.
This process of separating parts of the image from the work relates to the artist’s interest in the nature of the representational surfaces of photography, as well as his unease with the production of ‘finished’ images. In doing so, Subotzky poses the question: ‘Is it possible to create an image surface that can carry the formal and representational strengths of the images that interest me, but don’t present the ideology of a finished product?’
