Paradigm Gallery + Studio is pleased to present All Things Considered, a retrospective collection of lenticular images spanning 15 years by conceptual artist Anna Tas as part of (re)Focus 2024. All Things Considered will feature several of Tas’s popular lenticulars as well as a collaboration with artist Diane Burko, one of the original organizers of Philadelphia Focuses on Women in the Visual Arts in 1974. Tas utilizes the dynamic aspect of lenticulars to call attention to concepts of race, gender, and power. She creates a dialogue by allowing the viewer to control the perceived image as they move past and return to the artwork.

Anna Tas presented her first lenticular series in Philadelphia in 2008 and has since gone on to show and sell her work around the world. Tas’s passion for the work is supported by the relational aesthetics involved in viewing lenticulars, particularly the signature sway of the viewer as they move to see each frame of the piece until one image transforms into another. Tas’s practice is informed by her background in marketing, which influences her to question the nuances of images that demonstrate gender expression or concepts of beauty. Her Tipping Point series allows her to scrutinize images of plastic toy figures, dependent on only suggestions of paint tones, eyelashes, and hair shape to create a distinction between race and gender.

This practice nods to the original concepts behind Focus 1974 of art which call attention to behaviors that push women-identified and BIPOC artists to the margins of society. Created especially for this opening and on display for the first time, In Praise of Entropy, is a response to the wider chaos of the world - the pandemic, the global geopolitical situation - the sense of things spiraling out of control. Tas says:

In 2021, I moved back to the UK with my family, and reconnected with many places I loved as a child - including the great stained-glass cathedral windows of Canterbury Cathedral and the tidepools of the Kent Coast. Made with the flotsam and jetsam I have accumulated through my career, fragmented, yet whole - the seemingly random and ever-changing connections that weave us all together.

Tas illustrates the dichotomy between structure and anarchy with kaleidoscopic images of various collections in her life. Buttons, pencil sharpeners, paperclips, baby dolls, and fortunes without a cookie are carefully arranged on a clear surface, fragmented yet cohesive like stained glass. By marking incremental angles and harnessing mirrors, Tas creates movement and disorientation to further abstract her tokens of memory. Her experimentation continues through the proofing process, arranging frames within the lenticular lens until a seamless sequence emerges. Although Tas demonstrates control in her artistic process, she relinquishes it to the display of the work. The relationship between the viewer and the work adds longevity to Tas’s ideas, allowing further exploration into new avenues.

Paradigm Gallery is honored to present the fruits of the close personal and artistic relationship of Tas and Burko, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of FOCUS. Bearing Witness underlines the impact of environmentalism through the expressive language of art in a series of images inspired by Burko’s field observations of salt flats, lithium fields, and sandstorms in Chile’s Atacama Desert, shifting coral reefs in the Pacific and the ever-growing threats of wildfires and mass deforestation both in the Amazon, where Burko has recently returned from and around the world. Tas’s technical experience supports Burko’s research and interpretations to create effective images relational to the viewing experience.

Anna Tas is a British-born artist, who after spending over 20 years living abroad, has recently returned to the UK. Primarily known for her lenticular images, Anna’s work has been described as conceptual yet compelling, allowing the audience to interpret what they see in their way, as well as stimulating discussion about how we see and how images persist in our minds.

I am fascinated by the physical interaction the viewer has with a lenticular piece, the way it changes with their movement and angle of viewing – it provides an initial moment of surprise, and then an extended period of contemplation. A literal and figurative ‘back and forth’! I really enjoy the dialogue that comes from a viewer who is seeing the work from their own perspective, rather than mine, someone who has no preconceived idea of what it is that I am trying to talk about [...] I have no answers, no judgment, just questions. I am drawn to looking at why we think what we think, how we develop, and learn to decode what we see and assign certain values (for want of a better word) without being really conscious that this is what we do. I am part of something, yet also apart from it – observing, watching, questioning, and wondering. Why? What? How?

Anna’s work is held in public and private collections around the world, including New York, Miami, Mallorca, London, Amsterdam, Rome, New Dehli and Hong Kong.

Diane Burko’s work in painting, photography, and time-based media considers the marks that human conversations make on the landscape. A Professor Emerita of the Community College of Philadelphia with additional teaching experience at Princeton University, Burko has received multiple grants from the NEA, the Pennsylvania Arts Council, the Leeway Foundation, and the Independence Foundation. She has received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women’s Caucus for Art.

After focusing for several decades on monumental geological formations and waterways through landscape painting, Burko has shifted in the past 20 years to analyze the impact of industrial and colonial activity on those same landscapes. Burko’s practice seeks to visually emulsify interconnected subjects– extraction, deforestation, extinction, environmental justice, indigenous genocide, ecological degradation, climate collapse– so viewers might feel their connection viscerally through the beauty of her work. While her work deals with impending climate catastrophe, rather than lingering in dystopia, it celebrates the sublimity of the landscape by honoring the intricate geological and political webs that shape the identity of a place.