From : Ibram Lassaw: Deep Space and Beyond

By Arthur F. Jones, curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Radford University Art Museum

Multipositional Art and the "Projection Paintings"

" The idea of multiple positions extended beyond Lassaw's sculptures. Predating them in 1940s were small paintings on glass that when projected yielded eight different possible formats--because, when put into a projector, they can be rotated into four positions on both sides of the glass.

Lassaw's "projection paintings" are miniature Abstract Expressionist paintings on glass that, when shown through a slide projector, transform into monumental colored-light images (cat. nos. 15-20). The first series of "projection paintings," done on 2x2 inch glass slides, were made between 1946-49. Around the time of their creation, he projected them for a group of artists during a summer visit to Provincetown, Massachusetts. He also shared them in his New York studio with a small number of close friends, such as painters Willem de Kooning, and Paul Jenkins . About 1949 Lassaw also painted some larger lantern projector glass slides, which were used as a background setting for models in a fashion show, but these works are lost. In 1992, a new series of 2x2 inch works was begun after an approximately forty-three year lapse since setting aside the earlier ones, and since then Lassaw has occasionally worked with this process further.

Although the "projection paintings" might have importance within the history of Abstract Expressionism, few art scholars have given them sufficient attention, nor has the general public known of their existence. They were not conceived as marketable gallery art, but as experimental work. At the time that he first made them, Lassaw recalled thinking they seemed very "alive" and "in a sense, ...looked more like Abstract Expressionism than regular painted paintings." In 1947, he also wrote in a notebook that " glass slides of mine are just as much nature as nature of some artists. "

Lassaw's intuitive technique of executing the "projection paintings" involved dripping or brushing dyes over the surfaces of the glass, at times etching over dyed areas with a needle to make designs. The works are ephemeral, existing only as colored light when projected on surfaces. When projected to a large size the images actually become more detailed and the color remains clear and vibrant.

Lassaw's tiny paintings expand into light and pure color, as they are projected . On a wall they might become very large images encompassing sections of ceiling and/or floor. Like his sculptures, which seem to pull the viewer into their cores the "projection paintings" visually absorb viewers. They are capable of being larger and more enveloping of the viewer than were the largest paintings of the Abstract Expressionist era.. Anticipating "happenings" of the late 1950s and 1960s, the "projection paintings" (when shown in the 1940s--through a single projector)--encouraged interplay with viewers who literally carried the projected colors into space.

Although they date back to the 1940s, there have only been two formal gallery showings of the "projection paintings". The first one has held at the Center for Contemporary Art at the University of Kentucky in 1992. It featured 20 works. The second showing was in 2000, when a Radford University audience had an opportunity to see 41 of the original painted slides projected--and move in the space between the projected images and their projection source.

An audience-interactive idea was enhanced though the use of ten projectors during the presentation at Radford University. The ten images were projected horizontally, side-by side, on the gallery walls so as to surround the audience in the manner of a panorama. The images were also projected large enough to cover part of the floor, as well as the nine-foot high gallery walls, and some images were projected in corners on two walls. In this context, they enveloped three-dimensional architectural spaces and allowed viewers to literally enter them. The result was a dazzling visual feast that motivated the audience to become highly interactive with the projected colors. Even Lassaw was amazed, and remarked: "I have never seen my "projection paintings" presented in such an exciting format. It was one of my most memorable experiences."

Many of the "projection paintings" resemble forms viewed through a microscope. Their biomorphic aspect relates them to abstract styles of Surrealism. Other images might conjure associations with space travel, or stars and galaxies observed through a telescope. As colored light images, Lassaw also compares his "projection paintings" to the stained glass windows of Gothic churches. In the twelfth century, Abbot Suger likened the supernatural effect of light emanating from stained glass to a sacred revelation of the divine spirit. While the colored light effects of the "projection paintings" might evoke similar associations with spirituality, to Lassaw the universe itself is "God," including stars, planets, all matter, space and light."

The "projection paintings" may be described as simultaneously the smallest and largest Abstract-Expressionist paintings produced in the history of the movement. A concept of unity is suggested by these concurrently large and small sizes , and the physical material of the painted glass slide is inseparable from its application to a projected energy form.