You may need to do a little dance when looking at Marlene Weisman’s Super Deep 3D Lenticular Collages, shifting your stance to examine the many layers that appear to waver and transform right before your eyes.
“It’s John Waters meets Robert Rauschenberg with a little Cy Twombly thrown in there,” Weisman said of her mind-blowing collages, currently on view in her exhibit Life in 3D at Blue Table Post. Composed with kitschy lenticular images (prints that appear to move when viewed from various angles), her Super Deep 3D series blends Waters’ camp aesthetics, Rauschenberg’s use of found objects, and Twombly’s signature scribbles.
Weisman recalled finding a trove of tacky lenticular images at a 99-cent store about three years ago. “I was mesmerized and I said, ‘how can I use these?’” After experimenting with the hypnotic images, layering pieces onto existing traditional collage works, she discovered that some of the lenticular prints were slightly transparent. “You can see type through the images.” She then began scratching windows onto the prints, removing portions of the images to reveal text and images underneath that she either creates or clips out of books, magazines, atlases, and advertisements.
“It all starts as kitsch images—puppies, landscapes, all kinds of camp images—which I take out of context and then work through destructive practices,” she explained. “Some of them look like something you’d see in nature and some of them are pure abstraction, fantasy, or science fiction.”
Weisman titled the series Super Deep because “it brings you ‘super deep’ into the work” to discover the dreamlike figures, objects, and settings inhabiting the depths of her collages. The works give a “nod to the history of kinetic art,” according to the artist, since they create the illusion of movement and encourage viewers to move around and engage with the pieces.
Born in Brooklyn, Weisman grew up in Queens before her family relocated to Long Island in her teens. She studied graphic design at SUNY College at Buffalo, where she happily discovered a “great music scene” and started a fanzine with a friend. “I listen to a lot of glam rock when I work,” she says. “I love the energy—Bowie, T. Rex, Roxy Music…”
The music-lover moved straight to New York City after graduation and fulfilled her dream of working in the music industry, creating graphics for Stiff America Records and venues including Area, Danceteria, and Peppermint Lounge. Weisman’s work was also featured in two exhibits curated by Keith Haring that showcased Xerox Transfer Art.
“I was lucky enough to be part of the whole early ‘80s scene in New York,” she says. “I got to have the ultimate New York creative experience. I don’t think people today have had that. We would live on nothing. It was unbelievable.”
Weisman landed a plum position from 1988 to 1995 on the in-house design team for Saturday Night Live, creating on-air graphics and skit props for seven seasons. Demanding work schedules kept her from her art practice for several years until she signed up for a collage workshop in 2013. “When I was trained as a graphic designer it was a very hands-on craft and there was a lot of cutting and pasting,” she notes on the correlation between her design and visual art practices. “That whole cut-and-paste sensibility is really ingrained in me. I love it,” she continued. “The cut and paste, composition, and design, I really think it’s all one thing. I think that it’s just how you see the world.”
"I created these as the new administration came in. I felt like there was such hope when the former administration went out, and Biden went in," Weisman said of her recent mixed media collage series. "I felt like science was back, reason was back, and empathy was back. I was kind of ebullient and optimistic about the future."
Weisman moved to Brooklyn about 15 years ago and currently works from Ti Art Studios in Red Hook. “What I love is this art community in Brooklyn,” she said. “I love knowing the other artists. I love sharing the work. I love the feedback. I love going to other people’s shows. It’s so important.”
Weisman planned on debuting her Super Deep 3D Collages at The Other Art Fair in April 2020, but the pandemic shuttered the event, forcing it to take place digitally. The dimensionality of Weisman’s works are better viewed in person and do not translate well online, so she was thrilled when Blue Table Post’s founder, Oliver Lief, reached out to her. “These pieces are very hard to show online so I was so happy to have an opportunity to show them at Blue Table Post.” The post-production studio in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn regularly exhibits work by local artists. Weisman's Life in 3D opened in June.
Blue Table serves as “a place where the artist community and different filmmaking communities can meet and get to know each other,” Lief said. Though he typically attends the annual Arts Gowanus Open Studio events—as well as last year’s Atlantic Avenue Art Walk—to find artists to exhibit, Lief discovered Weisman online. “I was looking for someone…just digging on the internet and was just struck by the first images I saw [of her work],” he said. “The layering, colors…some of the themes in her work are really fun.”
Influenced by Surrealism, Dadaism, Pop Art, Strategic Vandalism, psychedelic art, and more, Weisman’s vibrant, playful works are packed with artifice in myriad layers of hallucinogenic, otherworldly scenes. “It never ceases to surprise me to see the interaction between the layers,” the artist says. “I’m attempting to redefine collage for the 21st century.”
See more of Marlene Weisman's work at the artist's website and on Instagram @marleneweisman.
Marlene Weisman | Life in 3D
Blue Table Post, 67 Dean Street (between Smith & Boerum Pl), Boerum Hill, BK
To schedule a viewing of the exhibit, email [email protected].
Exhibit on view through mid-August.