Image Dialogue Created for "Talking Pictures: Camera-Phone Conversations Between Artists"

For the exhibition "Talking Pictures: Camera-Phone Conversations Between Artists" (June 27 – Dec 17, 2017), The Met commissioned a group of artists to conduct visual dialogues on their mobile phones. Initially, twelve artists were invited to participate in the project. Each invited another artist to be his or her conversation partner. Over the course of five months, from November 2016 to April 2017, the pairs sent photographs and brief videos back and forth in a game of pictorial ping-pong. They were asked not to type messages or captions, and to refrain from sharing the images on social media, but the content and frequency of communication was otherwise determined entirely by the artists.

The twelve unabridged conversations were displayed in a variety of formats: on monitors and touch screens, as projected images, in printed books, and as prints pinned to the wall. The installation was conceived as an experiment and springboard for further discussion. At the conclusion of the exhibition, the artists’ dialogues were acquired for The Met permanent collection.

Daignault and Heidkamp conducted their dialogue in the form of original paintings, which they photographed with their phones. They painted some of the scenes entirely from life; others they finished in the studio, using mobile-phone photographs for reference. The artists decided in advance to use canvases 18 inches square, and the prints were produced at the same dimensions. In addition to recording scenes from their lives, the pair explored the relationship between observational painting and social media, as well as the tendency of museum visitors to experience works of art by photographing them with their phones.