"My work reflects everyday, banal experience while simultaneously creating a new reality. Photographs taken during road trips or walks capture usually unnoticed moments. The landscape is pared down to its essential forms and flattened to create geometric shapes and patterns. The photographic images, combined with the geometric residue, give both an intellectual and emotional analysis of the American landscape. These interventions create a surprise that forces a reprocessing of the information and help make sense of created and inhabited spaces.
"Everyday Paper"
The piece begins with the first photograph taken as I leave my apartment. I have chosen seven images to represent the start of everyday in my personal, yet public, landscape. I took a photograph every two steps and chose every third photograph, or every sixth step. Six steps represent the distance in which I can visually detect a change in place while walking. All the same elements: signs, trees, buildings, cars, etc. appear in each image, however, perspective has shifted. Looking from one image to the next the difference remains virtually undetectable, however skip a few and the change slowly emerges.
The photographs are arranged in a circular structure within the grid. The last image in the chosen sequence appears in the middle of the wall, with preceding images on the peripheral. This organization mimics how one visually inhabits a space while moving forward, where landscape elements move in and out of focus. Likewise, the center of the wall contains the images with the most details and layers built up. Focus is directed to the end of the sequence and the wall is warped outward. Color is shifted from cool to warm to dramatize the warping and focus.
Shapes are literally cut away or left into the paper to create an actual dimensional space. The image, however, is abstracted through the stark white flattened areas. The landscape is reduced to the essential elements by image threshold, retaining the shadows and highlights to describe a space. In this way, light becomes a defining element within each image.
Light maintains its presence as reflected color. The color provides a subtle definition for the edge of the paper, making it emerge from the wall. The color emulates a changing sky during the moment of sunset. Walking home each night I observed how the colors in the sky existed. I thought and thought about how I could print these colors using blend roll and maintain the luminosity and depth. Finally, I realized this would be impossible because the colors are made from light, rather than applied. To duplicate this effect, the back of the paper is printed with solid fluorescent ink flats, which reflects onto the wall. This allows for gradual shifts in color that appear subtle and are completely dependant upon a light source."
-Jill Ann Zevenbergen, 2009
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