SUB-SURFACE
Sub surface is a term that could be used to describe most of my current work, however, I have used it for the pieces that incorporate a 3-dimensional structure behind the acrylic screen.
Augmenting the form beyond a flat substrate, allows for the volume of the piece, to express photographic effects. The closer the material gets to the screen, the clearer and more saturated it becomes, the deeper parts of the modelled form, feel less focussed, and a depth of field is created by this range; drawing attention to the lens like qualities of the acrylic screen.
Initial studies were made using painted aluminium sheet, modelled by hand, to build a textured surface, and eventually, dichroic film and various other light altering materials, have been employed to create more luminous and reflective results.
These reflective materials, create a result that could be likened to a ‘double exposure’ within the frame. As light is reflected back onto the acrylic screen, a ghost image appears, and reflected colours shift during the day as the light changes.
The works starts to glow as if they have their own light source, and because we are accustomed to these type of blur effects and back lit screens, there is a cognitive dissonance that occurs, caused by the tension between what we are seeing, and what we are able to understand of it; we know that this is not a photograph or a digital screen but the brain has no other point of reference for this type of visual information.
This confusion, being a new visual experience, excites the brain because there is a desire to understand something that cannot fully be understood, unless interfered with, to reveal the form beneath the acrylic screen.
It is not my intention, that these works look like photographs, or mimic digital motifs accurately, but they are an unavoidable reference in the digital age, Im working to develop artworks that act as in interface between human perception and nature, using a process informed by technology.