REVERSED PARACHUTES
2015
Photograms (rayograms) originally handmade by the artist on baryta paper; frames made of untreated walnut wood, museum glass, acid-free passpartout back and spacer bar each 40 x 30 cm framed 50 x 40 cm Unique specimens

The first look: Tentacles float out of a jellyfish-like body in all-embracing darkness. But the eye deceives, it is not a medusa that Sissa Micheli has exposed, developed, stopped and fixed several times. The object whose contours and forms were incorporated by the photograms is a parachute. In Sissa Micheli's series Reversed Parachutes, the baryta paper, which is usually smoothed, was left in its original waviness. In this landscape of photographic paper, two different worlds come closer together. By means of targeted cadrages, the parachute seems to be caught in a whirl, as it throws its limbs around like a dancing figure. The hauntological-looking forms, which have been created on the baryta paper by repeated incidence of light, also tell of the history and function of the depicted object. This parachute comes from the field of military reconnaissance. Due to its topographical feel, the baryta paper, frozen in its movement, has the effect of a cartography of our wishful thinking placed in the picture. The mind, which tries to illuminate the darkness of the preconscious and the unrecognized, resembles battlefield illumination. In this case, parachute-mounted flares with grenade launchers hover above the nighttime terrain. The movements of the light are similar to the mind in such a way that those exposed parts of the terrain become more visible through the light than others. Like any photograph, the parachutes floating down illuminate only a subjective moment, as the position of the light reflects the cut that any exposure makes in time. In this work, Sissa Micheli's work simultaneously illuminates the materiality of the parachute and its position in the history of perception.
– Patrick Schabus