Carmen Vetter

SURFACE includes 15 of the artist’s new works in kiln-formed, bas-relief glass panels and unveils a new series of large-scale photographs that have been developing for the past two years.

Carmen’s newest body of work is, at its most basic, a study of surface, texture, and pattern. She creates her textural compositions by building up layers of powdered glass, moving and removing material as she composes. The completed work is evocative of eroded stone, cellular structures, and lichen, or on a macro level, aerial views of cities, land formations, and coastlines. But it is the relationship between these surfaces and the things that underlay them-their unique histories, the unseen events that preceded them and created them-that inspires Vetter. She says of her new work, “there is a bit of irony in titling this exhibition ‘Surface’ when I am truly interested in what is intrinsic, rooted, and deep. Surface is what we see, but only the indicator of what cannot be seen...Surface is the effect of the cause”.

Continuing with her study of the complex relationship between a surface and its causes, Carmen has created a series of visually stunning and conceptually challenging photographic self-portraits. The series of 4 large-scale photographs appear at first glance to be images of water, clouds, and hillsides. Upon closer inspection it becomes clear that these are close-ups of skin, undulating, textural, soft, and utterly personal. The skin pictured is the artist’s own, and it is, as Vetter describes it, “the part of myself that I am most embarrassed by”. By changing the way we perceive it, Vetter asks us to reframe our understanding of this very familiar, very individual surface; to take a second look and to see the beautiful, sometimes uncomfortable results of a lifetime lived in her skin.