Throughout its two-year exploration, my body of work has shifted through several different approaches and inquiries, still, they all link in some aspect or another to my core theme of human perception and spatial light and color awareness. I attempted to investigate this theme across a comprehensive variety of mediums and scales: from two-dimensional paintings, photographs, and compositions, to three-dimensional works of sculpture, forms, and light environments. I have curated the pieces and experience for this exhibition to provide its viewers with a visual and sensory exposure to a narrative reflective of my study into tangible and abstracted perceptions of reality and daily life through the lenses of light and color. The vision and intention behind this curation of work are to inspirit and immerse my audience with both the foundational or more traditional and the experimental pieces I have created over my IB Art and Design practice. This curatorial exhibit best demonstrates the evolution of my ideas of light and color by incorporating an aesthetic flow between 2D and 3D works, intending to communicate a holistic gaze into how we as humans experience and interact with reality under the contexts of value and hue.
Projections #7 & #8 | May, 2021. | (55.88cm x 96.52cm)
Drawing Dimensions | October, 2021. | (38.1cm x 55.88cm)
Exhibit View #1
Dimensional Lighting | October, 2021. | (45.72cm x 91.44cm)
Geometric Visions | Feb-March 2022 | (Sculpture)
Exhibit View #2
Mother | February, 2021. | (60.96cm x 96.52cm)
Piece from Geometric Visions | (Sculpture)
Untitled Photograph #6 | May, 2021. | (106.68cm x 55.88cm)
Dark Matter Bliss | April, 2022. | (55.88cm x 96.52cm)
Lights at the Fair | August, 2021. | (55.88cm x 96.52cm)
2nd view of Geometric Visions | (Sculpture)
Euphoria Fairs | March, 2022. | (121.92cm x 182.88cm)
Light Through the Dimensions | April, 2021. | (Sculpture)
The order of pieces for my exhibit is devised to illustrate a flow in my ideas and their placement is reflective of how each could aesthetically complement the others in its vicinity with hopes that it will have a greater emotional effect on my audience. These works also connect through the immense interest I have gained in artists such as James Turrell and Vasa Mihich, who both create art that employs color and light to immerse their viewers into a visual adventure that simultaneously exposes us to the concepts of interaction and the human experience. This curation is meant to evoke the same effect through the fluid transition from detailed prints and drawn lighting environments to abstract uses of light with hue in my portrait. Furthermore, the tangibility and realism of experiencing my sculptural pieces “Light Through the Dimensions” and the various acrylic components of “Geometric Visions'' that explore depth, color, and interaction with light work to guide the viewer toward a less defined perspective on how we experience reality. The latter of these also incorporates and produces the effect of caustic lighting within the space and connects with my early investigations. The use of color and light as the 3D works incorporate less materialistic representation than the previous pieces– with an abstraction of perception in both sculptures– follows into an evolution of visual effects through caustic lighting with my “Euphoria Fairs” and its respective photograph “Lights at the Fair” along with my final print work in the exhibit, “Dark Matter Bliss”. These three pieces all involve a combination of abstraction through the exploration of caustic light rays across photographic, painted, and digital works which transition into the last work of all, “Dimensional Lighting”, which uses two-point perspective and color to create an illusion of 3D depth.
DRAWING DIMENSIONS & DIMENSIONAL LIGHTING
Oil pastel on board | Gel composition on paper
This two-piece series presents three-dimensional spaces on a flat surface through perspective and value using two distinct mediums to challenge visual boundaries of representation. Both works utilize an unfamiliar lighting environment to produce the illusion that this corner space has depth and is occupied by various 3D cutouts and figures. Each piece leverages the observed vibrancy of the pastels or color film in a gamut of select colors to construct geometric forms meant to further compliment the effect of depth produced by each scene’s conditions.
PROJECTIONS #7 & #8
Long-exposure photographic prints
These two photographs come from my investigations into the work of artist James Turrel and my interest in projections and caustic lighting. The prints are experimental forms of long-exposure light photography and display an illuminated prism and crystal bowl as they cast projections onto the surrounding environment. In creating these works, I attempted to capture the intricacy of these forms in detail using qualities of light such as projection and caustic rays to reveal the carvings on the crystal through a contrast of darkness and the interactions of each with light.
MOTHER
Spraypaint on canvas
This piece is one of the earlier in my collection, inspired in part by Kehinde Wiley and Sam Lewis, artists whose characteristic styles of portraiture immediately connected with me. I wanted to focus on something I felt is often lost in portraiture, the personality of the subject, by capturing the essence of my mother’s many sources of joy and light in life through cartoonized representation and unfamiliar color families and a combination of painting techniques that create depth to immerse and introduce her through this unique aesthetic.
DARK MATTER BLISS
Printed digital composition on photo paper
This work revisits the lighting scenes of Euphoria Fairs and its original photograph Lights at the Fair as a digital composition with the goal of presenting the interactions of caustic light with an environment using Illustrator and color manipulation. The inverted and shifted values of vector paths convert the physical strokes and texture of my original painting into a visually fluid composition meant to evoke the same aesthetic as the photograph both were based on. This modified design was printed with a specific luster finish to further reflect the digital work’s gamut and depth.
GEOMETRIC VISIONS
Sculptures in cast acrylic
These pieces of sculpture are the result of my long-term vision of presenting caustic lighting and color projection through physical interaction, greatly influenced by the work of Vasa Mihich. The sculptures and display are designed to reflect a new perspective on how we experience reality through the lenses of depth, color, and light. The mylar elements meant to produce the effect of caustic lighting throughout the space also combine with the colored projections of the forms to create a unique visual illusion that aesthetically presents the pieces within the environment.
LIGHT THROUGH THE DIMENSIONS
Sculptures in marker on cardstock
This work interweaves various three-dimensional forms which were designed to obscure their true shape through the illusion of colored projections with the caustic lighting produced by the adjacent sculptures from Geometric Visions. This area of the exploration connects to James Turrell’s projection pieces, where the projections of tinted light work to visually obscure the illuminated forms next to reflective mylar surfaces that further disguise the true depth of each face.
UNTITLED PHOTOGRAPH #6
Photographic print on transparency
This piece is a continuation of my work around light projection, inspired by artist James Turrell, and in the original composition of the photograph is a 3D form from my series of sculptures Light Through the Dimensions. Much like the focus of the sculpture, this print uses the illusion of depth created by the combination of an intriguing projection on the three-dimensional form with a visually milky effect from the transparency used to print the photographic composition to present this interaction between light and space through a unique representation of hue and color.
EUPHORIA FAIRS
Acrylic paint, crayon, and pastel on paper
This piece is inspired by the work and style of artist Affandi and my goal was to represent the caustic lighting and overall visuals of the corresponding photograph: Lights at the Fair. I implemented the unpredictability of chance operation using the pull of gravity and combined this with intentional strokes and color placement to create a compositional flow that evokes similar visual cues to its photographic print. Ultimately, the selection of key values is meant to contrast the absence of black throughout the white background, much like an inverted vision of its photo inspiration.
LIGHTS AT THE FAIR
Photographic print on transparency
This piece accompanies the painting Euphoria Fairs and comes from early in my two-year visual exploration of light, color, and visual interaction. The work is a manipulation of a photograph from above the county fair meant to display light as inclusions on a lens digitally color graded for contrast and saturation. Its presentation leverages the unique appearance of transparency to heighten the illusion of depth produced through the contrast of bright lights against a dark background.