Modelling Reality
By way of response to this portion of the module, the work
of Jürgen Albrecht seemed fitting.
Albrecht has a couple of extremely engaging methods at his disposal, to
engage the viewer and address certain themes using ‘models’ as his medium, one
being light and shadow.
The sculptural, physical display models are essentially a large,
plain, box-like facade with what one might describe as letter box size rectangular peep holes,
affording the viewer an arresting view of miniature corridors and rooms
constructed in such a way as to fool the mind into thinking that you might be
looking into a real space, such is the illusory nature of the effect. These spaces are bereft
of any ornament, completely white, and lit from above by a natural, diffused
light source which is invisible from the outside of the box. This is a
deliberate ploy on the part of the artist, the effect is somewhat soothing and
altogether ethereal and of course changes depending on what part of the day you
happen to take a viewing. The boxes are situated in darkened rooms to further
enhance the effect of the incoming, filtered sunlight. The mind truly does lose
itself in these perfect miniature spaces, finding yourself imagining standing in, or passage
through the rooms as if they were in fact life-sized, to ascertain their hidden
dimensions and strange surreal atmospheres...
To further extend this idea, Albrecht also creates what he
calls ‘instruments’, precisely constructed model rooms or corridors with a
video camera affixed to one end. He then takes these instruments out with him
at various points in the day, through various locations with the camera
rolling.
The effect, once again is completely hypnotic – blazing,
super-contrasted light levels completely saturate the scene in one moment, to
be replaced by foreboding, near-dark shadows the next. The results of these ‘excursions’
are then projected in large format in the gallery or museum space, to give the
impression of correct scale, if not slightly larger than life and a static viewpoint for the beholder. In so doing, the
projection becomes fixed, the corridor looks almost completely
realistic, and comes alive with intense light effects, hardly betraying the manual
process behind it all, leading you to believe that perhaps it’s some clever use
of high-powered lighting creating the effect. It’s this illusion of reality
when clearly both approaches are unreal that is particularly appealing.
There is an intense, introspective or 'looking inward' approach to Albrecht's work which one can't help but feel calls into question the nature of our relationships with interior spaces generally. Perhaps it is a comment (through the use of the 'instruments') of our scurrying about inside these constructed spaces, closed off from the oustide world? Certainly one to meditate on.
I seem to recall coming across a video where he had included
objects bouncing around inside one of these instruments, though for some reason
the video has been removed and I could not find it on his Vimeo channel which
is a shame, as it catapulted this notion into wonderfully surreal territory. I
can only imagine that perhaps it may have ultimately been at odds with his
strategy to create certain, very specific visual phenomena – by including what
are effectively animated objects, the ‘stillness’ of the pieces is compromised.
More descriptive text about Jürgen Albrect’s work can be
found here:
No comments:
Post a Comment