Sangbin Im, Fabian Birgfeld, John Maeda January 2 - February 23, 2008 |
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Sangbin Im, a Korean artist who currently lives
in New York, creates digitally manipulated photographs by interconnecting
numerous pictures he has taken over a period of several hours to show the
relationship between the real and the virtual, the part and the whole; appearance
and manipulation. His seamless perceptual architectural “scapes” work as an exaggerated spectacle which finds its inspiration in the critical interpretation of advertising where everything is bigger than life. As a photographer, he is interested in the ways in which many contradictory modes of viewing and re-viewing the world are related. His landscapes investigates not only how we believe to be true can constantly be challenged by what we see, but also how the status of truth is open to question by examination of the complex relationship between appearance and perception. Fabian Birgfeld photographs, which are part of a series called "Skins," are dynamic images created from photographs of buildings. The perspectival distortion generated by the photographic process serves as a guide for generating a pattern of parallel and perpendicular lines. While this pattern derives from the actual view of the curtain wall, it is also a direct product of its original design. In this work, windows have replaced the solid wall and instead of providing merely light and air, they now primarily act as framing devices. Like one-way mirrors, their function differs depending on the viewing direction. From the inside-out, they frame the exterior. From the outside-in (i.e. from the direction of the public gaze), individual windows disappear inside the grid pattern of the curtain wall. Its modular and repetitive system symbolizes the promise of modernity. The aim of his new body of work is to make visible the difference between the two systems of patterns through interventions in other mediums such as drawing or digital and hand painting. In a way, the pattern that is superimposed and woven into the original photograph fragments the image and metaphorically creates a cladding that negates the conventional reading of photography as representation. The work becomes an image and an object at once, which creates a tension between the idea of photography as a two-dimensional image-carrier and the immediate material presence of the object in space. John Maeda, a world-renowned graphic designer, visual artist, and computer scientist at the MIT Media Lab, and a founding voice for “simplicity” in the digital age, creates Digital Bund (Shanghai), the first of a series of photographs on cities around the world. His approach to architecture is by incorporating video, photography and computer programming. After shooting a video of the Shanghai skyline, extrapolating stills from it and creating a computer program which changes the geometry and the color of the skyline, John creates an intriguing digital image of the city -- an image both complex and, at the same time, stripped by the architectural details. John Maeda has had major exhibits of his work in Paris, London, New York, and Tokyo, and has written several books on his philosophy of “humanizing technology” through his perspective on the digital arts including The Laws of Simplicity (MIT Press) published in 14 languages. |
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