Used Paper (Studio Topographies)

Used Paper (Studio Topographies) was a commission for Used Paper publishers in 2015. Here is the text that I wrote as a companion piece for the work:

The studio photographic image, without specific markers of scale, allows the viewer to imagine the depicted scene as as large or as small as the mood takes. The hermetically-sealed worlds of Studio Topographies have volume too; the lenticular prints give the illusion of three dimensions by compressing several slightly different views of the scene beneath their ribbed surfaces.

The initial impetus for Foil 1 (Black) and Foil 2 (Black) was the cracks on the surface of Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square; the foil in question is used by cinematographers to block out light, echoing the grand refusal of Malevich’s painting – but the prints’ extra (pseudo-) dimension substitutes flatness of Black Square for a fraught physicality.

Hemisphere (Gold) and Hemisphere (Red) seem, at first glance, to be products of computer imaging. On closer inspection, scratches and dust on the surface of the mirrors and the rough edges of the paper (on which grids have been printed) reveal the images as photographically generated. In the lenticular prints the mirror images themselves have depth, not unlike the black discs that miraculously become holes in cartoons.

The anaglyph image suspended beneath the glass in Range slowly rises up when viewed through the red/cyan glasses, to reveal…