Cinematic Forms of Light & Shadow
Chambers Art Gallery, Christchurch
March, 2022
Recently I’ve been using a combination of reflective metallic paints and dense light-absorbing black. The shapes are the result of mining the interiors of particular cinema spaces, slicing through the layers of the light and shadow in the image like an onion, revealing fragmentary patterns. The patterns are abstract but they were absolutely real at a particular point in time. I’m researching ideas related to mirrors – the refraction of light firstly in the photograph, then echoed through its projection over the internet and again when processed in a computer, the reflective paint, the doubling of the image to create the Rorschach effect and finally the fact that when we view abstract images we project our own thoughts onto them, and interpret what we’re seeing.
Jacques Derrida’s concept of différance, where meaning is differed/deferred, can be considered in terms of the act of thinking which necessarily involves association, memory, prediction, assumption, anticipation…we literally move between associations. It’s that space of our interior world I’m exploring.