Sonia/artiststatements

"These natural phenomena hint at a world beyond the visible"
https://www.splashandgrab.co.uk/features/myth-ng-hui-hsien

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Yoshinori Muzutani - write up about her work
"She uses a method developed to obtain hyperrealist images in order to produce a series that vacillates between the oneiric and the pictorial. The relationship her photography maintains with nature goes beyond the established patterns. Her images seem to interpose distance between the viewer and nature through an overlay of somewhat blurry surfaces in which nature appears estranged. Yet, at the same time, her approach evinces a penchant for an impressionist aesthetics, with its sensitivity to the subtle colors. She achieves a double effect of proximity and distance that turns out to be really interesting.

This effect, which is both aesthetic and sensorial, is not new in Mizutani’s work. When one’s work tackles a technical issue, chance can be an ally. In the case of Mizutani, there is also a prior intention. Just as in her previous works we can discern a deliberate path that makes it possible to foresee the result.

Technology and sensibility
Mizutani’s previous projects directly inform the HDR_nature series. For example, we find the same interest in getting under the skin of things and the same interest in color. Her prior work also addresses the natural and the uncanny—themes are developed in HDR_nature. What is new here is the use of the HDR technique, and in particular introduction of movement into the shot.

The more recent series show an interest in the relationship between nature and the fantastic. A domesticated nature, such as that of parks or ponds, belongs, in Mizutani’s work, to the realm of the unconscious. Nature also appears to reveal to us something that cannot be seen with the naked eye.

Even the cover of the book HDR_nature creates an interesting visual effect with a sheer cloth binding that shimmers as it is being handled. It foreshadows the contents: a multiplication of images as if stacked one on top of the other. And just as in nature, where sunlight changes the appearance of things, the images seem to change depending on the time of day."

Source: Yoshinori Mizutani

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Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs - write up at Bauhaus exhibition Düsseldorf
" 'The enemy of photography is the convention, the fixed rules, the how to do it. The rescue of photography takes place through experimentation.' Programmatically, this quotation by Laszlo Moholo-Nagy is prefixed in a catalogue on the wokrs of Taiyo Onorato (1979) and Nico Krebs (1979). The Swiss artist duo, who have been working together since 2003, is interested in the shifting of photo-technical boundaries, in a productive confusion of the perception of things and their representation. Onorato and Krebs act inventively, ironically and always with analogue means in their image findings. For their work group Color Spins, created in 2012, they have developed their own rotational apparatuses. The dynamic light sculptures, which are captured by colour photography, create a surprising illusionism. With a wink, the figurations recall the famous ensembles that Oskar Schlemmer developed more than a hundred years ago and later performed on the Bauhaus stage in Dessau.

The ephemeral light sculptures of the black-and-white series Ghost from 2012, on the other hand, step in front of the dreary backdrop of a piece of woodland. A disturbing surreality emanates from the appearances. The medium of photography still retains its magical character in the works of Onorato & Krebs. "

BAUHAUS AND PHOTOGRAPHY – ON NEW VISIONS IN CONTEMPORARY ART

NRW FORUM, DÜSSELDORF, 7.10.18 – 10.03.18

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Semiconductor
Semiconductor is UK artist duo Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt. They make visually and intellectually engaging artworks which explore the material nature of our world and how we experience it through the lens of science and technology, questioning how these devices mediate our experiences.

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Ian Nesbitt: The Art Of Moving Slowly

Since 2008, Ian Nesbitt has been building a body of collaborative cinematic works that take an extended sideways look at the philosophy and practice of slow movement. Travelling on foot, with a cart, on a canal, by horse and wagon, or by pedal powered car, he has made a series of films that invert the accepted societal trajectories of ‘faster’ and ‘more’ by demanding ‘slower’ and ‘less’. In doing so, his films not only focus on the experience of passing through but also make time and space for looking more deeply at notions of landscape, community and pilgrimage.