Casey Kaplan

While working towards "Twenty Twenty,” an exhibition of works on paper featuring artworks by seven different artists at the Aldrich Museum in Connecticut, Judith Eisler (b. 1962, Newark, NJ) found herself reconsidering her long term relationship to distance, and to the here and now. For the past eight months direct contact with our friends and family has been replaced with Zoom and FaceTime calls in small spaces, creating an inversion where the screen is no longer the realm solely reserved for celebrities. We have all become images on a screen. The audience is not in the room, and every performance occurs without the affirmation of applause.

Much of Eisler’s prior work has focused on the world of cinema, and more specifically, iconic actresses from 1960's and 1970’s films. These figures are an integral part of staged fiction, performing according to script and interpretation. Lighting, camera, hair, makeup, and wardrobe all contribute to the artifice of a filmic presence. Eisler remains drawn to cinematic archetypes; however, during quarantine she began to explore in graphite images of contemporary women who perform in real time on the public stage, effecting real change. The words and actions of “Kamala," “AOC," “Stacey," and “Nancy" all have a direct bearing on our political landscape, our rights, and especially our perceptions of our own possibility and agency.

We have all quarantined in 2020 within our individual pods, and perhaps, even as we “distance," we have come closer to one another.