Façonner la Lumière
Façonner La Lumière
Adrian Bony / Mind’s Eye gallery, Paris
7th November – 16th December 2024
The word photography literally means “drawing with light”. It was coined in 1839by one of the pioneers of the field, the scientist Sir John Herschel.The term is of course best understood in the context of black and white photography, where the image is formed and perceived through the interplay of light and shadow, along with the infinitely many intermediate shades of grey.
Roseanne Lynch pursues this literal interpretation of photography by studying the play of light on objects, either existing ones (a Bauhaus staircase, the Kandinskys’ bathtub) or, more frequently, abstract ones created from paper, sheet metal, or photographic film, by folding, bending, curling or deforming in some other way. She invites the viewer to contemplate light in its purest form, how it impinges on, is reflected by, and brings to life these essentially abstract forms, some of which seem to hover in space like mysterious unidentified flying objects. Her fascination with light brings to mind the Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto and his movie theatres or seascapes. They have in common a certain surrealistic element induced by the magical effect of light.
The approaches she favours, photograms, luminograms and solarisation, are classical techniques. Photograms date from the early days of photography, but were later employed in more abstract, experimental ways by surrealist artists such as László and Lucia Moholy-Nagy. Another artist known for his photograms was Man Ray who, together with Lee Miller, developed the technique of solarisation. Most of the works in the current exhibition are unique silver prints.
This exhibition is kindly supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, Culture Ireland and Centre Culturel Irlandais.
Text by Adrian Bondy.
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