Johanna Evans-Colley
Artist | Website
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ARTIST STATEMENT Experimentation, process, materiality, modes of perception and technology are at the center of my practice. This current body of work is a series of videos that are visual studies of/glimpses into illusionistic space. Invented horizons and vistas are created using only a camera and different papers. These materials are manipulated in front of the camera while filming to create horizon-like effects. There is no post production of any kind. Everything has been done “in camera”. Or, more specifically, outside the camera by manipulating materials in front of the camera. I am interested in the convergence and dissonance of high technology and low technology, old technology and new technology. I’m fascinated by what happens in the middle, between of the two. Making these pieces is an attempt to gain a more tactile, personal and immediate experience with digital technology, by using my hands and real physical stuff – paper, film, tape, blades, pins. It’s also an experiment to make more imperfect, physically involved digital work. The set-up, the taping, the cutting, the poking, the ripping, are all integral parts of the pieces. The resulting constructed-video landscapes have a slightly strange, handmade, decidedly low tech feeling, while also conveying an other-worldly, almost cinematic quality, where sound does not necessarily match sight. The horizons in the pieces, even though you watch them being cut out, appear and feel real, somehow true. Disbelief is suspended. The videos were conceived of and begun in New Mexico, with it’s wide open go-on-forever landscapes. Now, most of them are now made on my roof in Brooklyn, where a wide open view can only be imagined, or made. |