Suzanne Gainer

Suzanne Gainer is a conceptual photographic montage and lens-based artist who has exhibited throughout New England and across the United States. Recent exhibitions include a solo show at the Danforth Art Museum in Framingham, Massachusetts, Galatea Fine Art and Kingston Gallery in Boston, Pollinator Art Space in Atlanta, Work Space Manchester in Connecticut, and ProvWash Gallery in Providence, Rhode Island. 

We will find in the lens-based practice of Suzanne Gainer a poetic and interdisciplinary approach of combining self-portraiture, the written word, digital montage, and symbolic motifs which ruminate on the latin form of Mythos, Memoria, and Medicina (or myth, memory, and medicine). These themes are reflected from a feminist perspective based on trauma from sexual assault. Suzanne Gainer mythologizes a narrative around herself as a faceless figure, revealing only fragments of her anatomy covered in either texts, motifs, or both. The ‘memory’ entails symbolism such as the sky, dead and lively birds, and fine linen. These motifs convey a sense of profound yearning for the seeking of deeper reflection and enlightenment within the confines of restrained reality. The outside world seems to be a prison of control and the artist uses the art of montage to assemble and reconfigure her sense of reality and self.

As a result, this body of work is referred to as Every Woman and Nobody, which gives clues to the juxtaposition of pale form, geometric layout, iconography, and figurative fragments. These assembled pieces of philosophical visual musings are a contemplation on the sensibilities of women. By depicting herself as fragments being consumed by fleeting apparitional texts and motifs, Suzanne Gainer reveals the concept of a woman as being perceived and used as a ‘vessel’. She is, in essence, releasing her trapped form through these compositions in incomplete, fragmented, and even tormented form. The photographs themselves are delicate, focusing on texture and light. When combined with fragments, such as twigs, pieces of foliage and decaying plant-life, fine linen, and empty space, we will find a haunted sense of atmospheric disturbance. These compositions almost seem as if the artist were haunting herself, trapped in a mental prison, an imposition from patriarchal-infused tyranny from dealing with her past trauma and barriers. Every Woman and Nobody is not only a poetic self-reflection, but a rallying cry for women to seek solace in solidarity by confronting the overarching abyss which imposes confinement, in both a literal and metaphorical sense. In the texts for example, we will find clues to these inner-reflections, such as fragments of medical records or excerpts from books on psychology. 

Amnesia (pictured above) is one of Suzanne Gainer’s signature pieces. This fragment depicts an improvised assembled montage of a momentary act of experimentation. The artist promptly captures herself with her mouth open and superimposes a crow or crow-like bird in a diptych. As if she were in harmony and synchronization with the creature, we will find assembled texts reveal personal medical records. This haunting image recollects on memories of pain and suffering indirectly and, as a result, alludes to solidarity with nature to cope. 

A deeply poetic artist with a portfolio full of profound ruminations, Suzanne Gainer reveals a realm of in-between spaces of consciousness. The dichotomy between enlightenment and entrapment in her work reveals a yearning for escapism from institutional and socially-imposed structures of confinement. Reflecting on her past personal trauma and accumulated barriers in life, the artist constructs configurations of reflective musings. In these compositions, we will find an interdisciplinary approach of relaying various ‘portals’ and transponders of consciousness through fragments of found and sourced texts, experimental and improvised self-portraiture, assembled montage and collage configurations as well as motifs which connect all these elements together with mysterious and indirect connotations. 

https://suzannegainer.com