These images are lost memories, built on the constructed realities of history and what went before. Woodruffe sources images from a range of places including old magazines and paintings from antique stores, re-imagining the life of these found images onto the canvas on which he works.

The photographic nature of these works is what strikes me the most. Not in a literal representational sense, rather in a way that captures an essence of the fleeting moment. You are presented with an image and forced to create a real historical narrative for the subjects. They entice you in with their whimsical motions and melancholic fervor; melancholy in a sense of reflection rather than dejection. Woodruffe constructs a series of ‘unreal realities’, thrusting onto the viewer the responsibility of filling in the gaps.

 

Memory and the cyclic nature of time pervade these images. They put forth the age old question of the hen and egg; which came first? In this instance was it the memory or the image? As the French cultural critic and philosopher Roland Barthes once said “not only is the Photograph never, in essence, a memory…but it actually blocks memory, quickly becomes a counter-memory”. Hence Woodruffe’s relationship with the ideologies of photographic art history, memory and circumstance are distorted ideals. He uses these images as a mechanism for reminiscence, nostalgia and invoking a sense of bewilderment. Are these paintings photographs of a personal history? If so, who’s?

Taken from "Constructed Realities: Evan Woodruffe's 'Time is a Thief'"

By Andrew Gomez