Kelly Xintaris

After Gwendolyn Brooks’ “An Aspect of Love”
archival inkjet print
19 x 11 in.

Unusual complexities arise through the use of words and pictures, together and alone. The juxtaposition of images and text, along with the use of photographic collage, involve recontextualizing language in unexpected ways. In playing with the multivalent meanings of words and images, I also am interested in the construction of a metatext.

These prints are from an ongoing body of work rooted in image and text. All of the photographs were taken in Chicago and influenced by my experiences living here, and they are collaged with text. “An Aspect of Love” has text from a Gwendolyn Brooks poem called “An Aspect of Love, Alive in the Ice and Fire.”

In these works, my concerns have to do with the relationships between sociological possibility, personal experience, and the ubiquity of advertising. The everyday built environment is often the nexus and focus of these confrontations. On a broader level, my work leads me to go beyond a circumnavigation of the obvious, to an exploration of what is, what was, and what can only be imagined.