In Frying Pan, photographer Annette Kelm presents an early electric guitar (nicknamed the “frying pan”) against a turquoise-and-black Dutch wax fabric, typical of African textiles. This use of fabric enables Kelm to mix cultural registers, and can be seen as a found object taken from its usual context and redeployed by the artist elsewhere. This arresting juxtaposition transforms the 1931 Rickenbacker guitar from an early piece of rock and roll memorabilia to an ethnographic treasure. The fabric also serves to mask and/or eliminate the horizon line in the photograph, radically flattening the composition. Scale becomes difficult to recognize, and the space one is accustomed to finding in the photograph transforms.

Adapted from

Gabriel Ritter, DMA unpublished material, 2016.