Izabela Pluta’s new suite of tapestries, Shadowing, critiques the aesthetic sensibilities of found images lifted from genre-specific Reader’s Digest publications, notably Scenic Wonders of the World (1981).

Based on a number of collages that saw the artist’s prized copy of the book effectively shredded, these large-scale tapestries disrupt the pictorial qualities of their source material, making them difficult to locate, read or otherwise interpret. 

The volumes from which Pluta selected her imagery reflect an optimistic, late-capitalist, Western point-of-view/mindset/perspective. They are indicative of a desire to make the world visually comprehensible as an adjunct to travel while also remaining in awe of nature’s incomprehensible beauty. Their emergence in the 1970s can be attributed to a growing market of middle-class readers with the means and desire to travel internationally, as well as technological advances in photography, printing, publishing and distribution. 
The compilation of images into ‘coffee table books’ like these is an attempt to evoke the unique qualities of a number of locations. The irony, however, is that such a collation does the exact opposite, flattening difference and instead presenting a visual parade of postcard views, devoid of any context.

In Pluta’s collages, pages have been sliced and spliced into fragments where air, land and water converge. Violently abstracted, they disorientate and dislocate the geographies from which they are drawn. The straight and curved lines that define the collages are based on templates derived from technical drawing books for engineering students. Parts of each collage have a three-dimensional quality, as sections of cut paper curl away from the support to reveal shadowing beneath. 

In transposing each paper collage to the format of a large-scale cotton Jacquard tapestry, Pluta photographs what is essentially a hand-assembled collage of existing images. This photograph then informs the weave of the tapestry, which includes a subtle trompe-l'œil effect to mimic the shadowing.