Jeff Robb "Thought Experiments"
Witzenhausen Gallery
This event has ended.
The lenticular photographic work of Jeff Robb is collected worldwide. His latest series of 3D moving images, engagingly entitled Thought Experiments, will be the artist's first solo exhibition in NYC.
Robb, explores forces of the natural and unnatural world in 3D space, within a 2D format and has a particular interest in relationships between the known and the unknown. He chooses a familiar subject, often the nude female form, in order to examine the unknown side of 3D image making and unknown aspects of human psychic processes.
Like many artists, Robb works in series, where each series is a development from the last in terms of concept and technique. Robb however goes to extraordinary lengths in achieving his images, exploring the effects of the forces of nature - gravity, light and magnetism – on his subject in new ways. The resulting breath-taking images transcend the physical world.
In Robb’s latest work ‘Thought Experiments’, a series of delicate female forms exist in a ‘liminal’ state, between this world and another; between the known and the unknown. As we move to adapt our view, the figures become apparitions, or wraiths, sometimes drained of colour, as if gradually relinquishing life. The figures are at a gateway, or threshold, undergoing a state of metamorphosis, to be witnessed by the viewer. The images transport us into another world, mirroring other states of mind.
The title of this series derives from the revolutionary scientific work of Einstein and contemporaries at the beginning of the 20th century, who used ‘thought experiments’ to understand our relationship with the world. Some practitioners of early thought experiments asserted that life can exist in many different states simultaneously, calling this a state of ‘superposition’. These counter-intuitive ideas of the pioneers of thought experimentation inform our understanding the world to this day. Continuing scientific experiments appear to verify that life can indeed exist in different states simultaneously. It is this concept which interests Robb and neatly underpins the latest developments in his work.
The success of Robb’s imagery lies in his mastery of the 3D film and photographic process. Indeed the work is hard to classify. Robb himself describes his work as “somewhere between traditional photographic recording and three-dimensional sculpture”.
Lenticular photography dates back to the beginning of the twentieth century. The process starts by capturing many images taken around a single subject. Robb himself has designed unique image capture systems which take multiple images simultaneously, capturing real time motion or as a sequence of frames from a single camera. The images are then combined into a single 3D image on a computer. Red, green and blue lasers expose a photographic substrate, which is combined with a very precise optical lens structure to produce the finished fine art image. Every stage of the process is done by hand and requires great skill.
Media
Schedule
from April 26, 2012 to May 24, 2012
Opening Reception on 2012-04-26 from 17:00 to 20:00