In 1948 the German zoologist H. M. Peters was working in the laboratories of the University of Tübingen studying spiders and the construction of their webs. He documented the step-by-step process of the weaving of an orb web, the most common type of design. Peters followed the spider’s actions from the beginning: he watched it release the initial silk thread into the air, saw its front and hind legs move back and forth as it tied two different lines together, then drop down to create the frame threads which outlined the periphery of the web. He watched the spider walk clockwise as it connected the radial threads to the catching spiral, the circular pattern that gives
the orb web its name. Working towards the centre, the spider moved counter-clockwise into the middle of the sticky spiral, spinning over 1,000 intersections before completing the entire web in under twenty minutes.¹
Since spiders usually build their webs at night, Peters was bothered by the fact that he could not observe them during his own daytime work schedule. He was intent on filmingthe process, but since spiders construct their webs between two and five o’clock in the morning it was “a bad hour for the movie crew to work.” He asked his colleague in the Pharmacology Department, P. N. Witt, for advice. Would it be possible to change the time the spiders built their webs if they were given drugs? Witt was intrigued, and dissolved caffeine in sugar water, applied a drop to a cotton swab and touched it to the mouth of a spider. The spider built a web at its usual hour, but surprisingly the web structure was altered: the radial threads as well as the catching spiral were different than all of the previous times. In the following years Witt tested a great variety of drugs, including LSD, valium and mescaline on orb web spiders and investigated how these substances affected their web construction. It was soon clear that certain drugs produced specific effects, resulting in the doctor’s research of a new type of design: the drug web.²
Photography was crucial in the research of these webs, which were made in a custom-built environment. The webs were woven inside an aluminum frame, and were covered with a thin layer of white spray paint once they were finished. “The photograph was taken in the opening of a black box, with fluorescent lighting from the sides, on high contrast film.”³ The structural alterations of each web were subsequently analyzed by looking at their reproduction in photographic prints. This visual analysis follows what the Canadian artist Ian Wallace describes as ‘opticality’, a concept which explores “the relationship of the depicted sign to the surface on which it is inscribed.”⁴ Yet what about the space in between surfaces?
In Andrea Pinheiro’s first solo exhibition at Cooper Cole in Toronto, the ‘space in between’ is central to the six works on display from her Chambers series. Pinheiro’s process involves taking a black and white photograph with a homemade pinhole camera, then painting on the postcard-sized print and scanning it at high-resolution using a digital scanner. The enlarged image is then digitally printed using LightJet technology. Pinheiro’s series collapses time by conflating three different histories: the history of painting, the history of photography and the fast-moving history of digital technology. Similar to the aluminum frame built inside the black box, Pinheiro creates a unique environment that operates as a structure for web building, with her webs of paint hanging between two photographic surfaces: the black and white pinhole image and the enlarged colour print in the frame.
Sandwiched between the worlds of analog and digital photographic technology, Pinheiro’s work follows American critic Michael Fried’s observation that since the “late 1970s and 1980s, art photographs began to be made not only at large scale but also for the wall” which provoked the issue of the “relationship between the photograph and the viewer standing before it,” inheriting the “problematic of beholding… that had been central to the evolution of painting.”⁵ If we are to isolate Pinheiro’s painting practice, it relies on Wallace’s interest in “photo-enlargement [and] how it opens up the visual power of surfaces that are not usually looked at – in other words, details, not the central subject, but the lateral details, which are also interesting.” Like the minute details of a spider web, our impression of space and its limitations are bound to be re-evaluated.
- Lucas Soi
the orb web its name. Working towards the centre, the spider moved counter-clockwise into the middle of the sticky spiral, spinning over 1,000 intersections before completing the entire web in under twenty minutes.¹
Since spiders usually build their webs at night, Peters was bothered by the fact that he could not observe them during his own daytime work schedule. He was intent on filmingthe process, but since spiders construct their webs between two and five o’clock in the morning it was “a bad hour for the movie crew to work.” He asked his colleague in the Pharmacology Department, P. N. Witt, for advice. Would it be possible to change the time the spiders built their webs if they were given drugs? Witt was intrigued, and dissolved caffeine in sugar water, applied a drop to a cotton swab and touched it to the mouth of a spider. The spider built a web at its usual hour, but surprisingly the web structure was altered: the radial threads as well as the catching spiral were different than all of the previous times. In the following years Witt tested a great variety of drugs, including LSD, valium and mescaline on orb web spiders and investigated how these substances affected their web construction. It was soon clear that certain drugs produced specific effects, resulting in the doctor’s research of a new type of design: the drug web.²
Photography was crucial in the research of these webs, which were made in a custom-built environment. The webs were woven inside an aluminum frame, and were covered with a thin layer of white spray paint once they were finished. “The photograph was taken in the opening of a black box, with fluorescent lighting from the sides, on high contrast film.”³ The structural alterations of each web were subsequently analyzed by looking at their reproduction in photographic prints. This visual analysis follows what the Canadian artist Ian Wallace describes as ‘opticality’, a concept which explores “the relationship of the depicted sign to the surface on which it is inscribed.”⁴ Yet what about the space in between surfaces?
In Andrea Pinheiro’s first solo exhibition at Cooper Cole in Toronto, the ‘space in between’ is central to the six works on display from her Chambers series. Pinheiro’s process involves taking a black and white photograph with a homemade pinhole camera, then painting on the postcard-sized print and scanning it at high-resolution using a digital scanner. The enlarged image is then digitally printed using LightJet technology. Pinheiro’s series collapses time by conflating three different histories: the history of painting, the history of photography and the fast-moving history of digital technology. Similar to the aluminum frame built inside the black box, Pinheiro creates a unique environment that operates as a structure for web building, with her webs of paint hanging between two photographic surfaces: the black and white pinhole image and the enlarged colour print in the frame.
Sandwiched between the worlds of analog and digital photographic technology, Pinheiro’s work follows American critic Michael Fried’s observation that since the “late 1970s and 1980s, art photographs began to be made not only at large scale but also for the wall” which provoked the issue of the “relationship between the photograph and the viewer standing before it,” inheriting the “problematic of beholding… that had been central to the evolution of painting.”⁵ If we are to isolate Pinheiro’s painting practice, it relies on Wallace’s interest in “photo-enlargement [and] how it opens up the visual power of surfaces that are not usually looked at – in other words, details, not the central subject, but the lateral details, which are also interesting.” Like the minute details of a spider web, our impression of space and its limitations are bound to be re-evaluated.
- Lucas Soi
Chamber 1, Spider, 2012, light jet print, 48 x 60", edition of 3
Chamber 2 - screen, 2011, light jet print, 40 x 60", edition of 3
Chamber 4 - Trellis, 2011, light jet print, 48 x 61", edition of 3
Chamber 8 - Around between, 2011, light jet print, 48 x 60", edition of 3
Chamber 7 - windowsill, light jet print, edition of 3, 48 x 60", 2011
Chamber 6 - Ledge, 2011, light jet print, 48 x 60", edition of 3
Chamber 3 - stoop, 2012, light jet print, 40 x 56", edition of 3
Chamber 9 - Aquarium, 2013, light jet print, 60 x 48", edition of 3
Chamber 16 - Firecracker, 2011, light jet print, 48 x 61", edition of 3
Old Clothes, 2014, light jet print, 61.5 x 48", ed. 3