2016.16.4, Annette Kelm, Turning into a Parrot, 2012

Turning into a Parrot (2003) depicts a gloved arm reaching into the picture plane from the right, upon which rests a large red parrot before a lush tropical backdrop of jade plants and palm trees. In this work artist Annette Kelm makes a deadpan, self-reflexive nod to the photographic medium’s earliest perceived function—the act of rote reproduction. To “parrot” is to repeat something mindlessly and mechanically, to duplicate or mimic without understanding—much like the photographic apparatus itself. In an oblique manner, Kelm also seems to reference art history’s longstanding tradition of quoting and/or recycling image types and symbols with the parrot itself embodying the act of imitation. 

Kelm is best known for her still life images that feature lush patterned backdrops and heavily saturated colors [2016.16.1, 2016.16.3]. Typically the fabric backgrounds serve to mask and/or eliminate the horizon line in her photographs, radically flattening the composition. Scale becomes difficult to recognize, and the space one is accustomed to finding in the photograph transforms. Kelm's works appear to follow conventional forms of the photographic tradition, featuring still lifes, portraits, and landscapes, for example. But at the same time, she undermines the promise of objectivity by adding elements that seem surreal or subjective. 

Gabriel Ritter, DMA unpublished material, 2016.

Until 2016: Marc Foxx Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

From 2016: Dallas Museum of Art, purchased from above [1]

[1] previously entered provenance, TMS 2016.16.5

Apply to objects where number equals 2016.16.4