You get what you see. You see what you get. photograph, fabric, thread, and varnish, 2022
“It said that what you see is what you get, and I think that art is exactly the opposite. What you see is not what you get!” from “ANISH KAPOOR; In conversation with Nicholas Baume,” 2008.
You see what you get. You get what you see. explores the polarization of politics and the difference between perception and reality.
Michele Landel began by digitally manipulating screenshots of a woman from an online clothing catalog. She chose the same woman twice, in slightly different outfits and poses. The model is the idealized self and acts as a mirror to represent one’s longing to appear perfect for others. She printed the altered photographs onto cut-up used bedsheets and varnished the fabric to protect and fix the image and also to cause the image to curl and peel. She stitched the stiffened patchwork photographs together onto a second bedsheet to engage the body’s perception/knowledge and the physical familiarity associated with textiles.
In this work, the first woman greets the viewer with an empty stare. By cutting eye holes in the fabric, Landel is encouraging the viewer to imagine standing under the sheet and looking through the woman’s eyes. Next to her on the same bedsheet the second woman has a band of black fabric covering her vision, encouraging the viewer to imagine putting on the bedsheet and seeing nothing. They are the same woman but also different and both are blind but in different ways.
You are what you see. You see what you are.
You can only understand or receive that which you are prepared to see. You can only receive that which you can understand.
You perceive what you receive.
You receive what you perceive.
You have what you recognize.
You recognize what you have.
You can only be given what you can understand.
You get an illusion and what you see is real. You see an illusion and what you get is real. You get something real but see an illusion. You get an illusion but see something real.
You are given an illusion but see something real. You are given an illusion but see facts.
You are given facts but see an illusion.
If you can’t see it, is it real?
If you can’t get it, is it real?
If you can’t understand it, is it an illusion?