I’m creating a flat, invented world

"After some five years of doing intense single images with no composition, but just subtle adjustments to the plane, I could stand it no longer, so I started putting one image next to another. Sort of just shoving them together… like a galaxy image that invites you in, next to a desert surface that projects out at you. It meant that when you were close to the work each eye would see a different image, or you would have to move your attention from one to the other, but when you pulled back a bit, the images seemed to be working together, and made for a more complex spatial experience. For a while I liked that, and I did a series of double and triple-image works using pictures, mostly torn from books and magazines, that I had collected over the years. I’m creating a flat, invented world. Imagination comes in from building an image so that it has a physical reality with some real staying power."

Vija Celmins in TATEETC