This chapter describes part 1 of Sans titre by Melanie Myers, made in 2022-23. It is two minutes long.
In front of you is a set of two free-standing French doors one and a half metres apart. The artist has constructed them using papier mâché, and they are roughly the size of real doors: a little more than half a metre by 2 metres. On the backside, Myers has used pencil crayon to draw wood grain, but on the front, there is nothing so ordinary: it holds a beautifully drawn surface of a lake with lily pads floating on it. Behind the doors, through this portal, are two drawings on top of one another: the lower is a continuation of the shallow water with tree branches sticking out of the water, and ducks floating on the surface, partially hidden by the branches. Above is a triptych of the opposite shore of the lake, complete with a dense wooded area and thick red and orange undergrowth. Myers has drawn the details of the leaves, the texture of the rocks and branches, and the reflection of the trees on the water. The tops of the trees are jagged as they meet the sky, as if they have been ripped like a piece of paper. This landscape is repeated three times, almost identical though the colours alter slightly, and the trees point to the other edges of the paper, like a fan. It is late summer, and the sun must be setting because the water is getting darker. The colours of the sky reflect in the rippling water, oscillating between oranges, purples, and hints of blue.
The papier mâché bases even ripple: the doors have been caught mid-sway, and the bottom edge of the triptych juts out a little, right where the water meets the shore. This technique plays with our perception: what we think should be flat, like a drawing, reaches out into our three-dimensional world. Running your hand down each one, you would feel the edges of the strips of paper that were dipped in a watery glue and layered on top of each other to create the base.
To hear more about the artist’s play with drawing as sculpture, go onto the next chapter.