MOUVEMENTS (imaginary utopia)

Mouvements (imaginary utopia), 2015 – 2018, Oslo, Norway, analogue photography. Sizes vary, for example: 50.8 x 33.84 cm (25ltd.ed +2AP), 100 x 140 cm, limited editions, and public artwork, textiles. Oil and water joined in the imaginary realm, Mouvements looks at the way humans look and feel while looking. The relationship between time, technology, nature, and resources looks at the ways utopian, iridescent colours reflect the heavens, in the sea. The granularity of analogue processes are emphasised in the gentle ripples, to draw attention to time. Psychology both of the body of the viewer and the mechanical apparatus of photography are centered through the sensorial memories of beauty, love, reason, and enlightenment.

 

The images are from Virtual Material, a body of work including: Mouvements, Teknovisuell Experience, Sonidos, Ultraviolet Forest, videos, installations, projections, wall coverings, acrylic panels, garments. Concept mock-ups for commercial installations in mosaics, metal, custom panels and other materials for facades, walls, and public art spaces. Public Art concepts and material possibilities follow images. Artaic Custom Mosaic Tile, Equitone Fiber Cement Facade, Acyrlic or Textile Panels, Metal with substrate installation systems, Projections. Contact: mariammanart@icloud.com

The Mouvements series was created at Oslofjord. The images are framed with the the curiosity to gain insight into the convergence of nature and technology as the way through time. Alongside my personal perspective that quiet joy heals, the images were exhibited three-years after the exposures were made, at Vérité, in Oslo, Norway. Vérité, French for “the truth” realized the imaginary confluence of the element of water through the technocratic relationship.

 

Oil and water have been subjects of cognitive and geological conflict, and are presented as allegorical elements for technocratic stories made by conscious and subconscious motivations. The reference to water as a reflective and moving surface invites imagination of the etheric and heavenly realms of the sky present as hovering upon the images themselves. Inspired by Umberto Eco‘s ideas on late modernity, in Chronicles of a Liquid Society, the ways images are read as inverses within embodied cognitive connections, are realised within the viewer as malleable surfaces of memory. The viewing distances engage viewers’ senses (of stillness and movement) and of the ways appearances can obfuscate and reveal, expand or contract.

 

Making the conceptually impossible, possible always comes with sacrifice and costs that must be deeply considered. Philosophically, the predetermined cost of the digitisation of life itself poses a paradox on notions of intelligence. Ideas and even good intentions can be dangerous, creating larger issues from relative abundance. Therefore the references in my work maintain a relationship to reality. They are carefully framed to generate a sense of acceptance but not complicit compliance. The viewer is realized as the generative agent in self-understanding and action. From the root of serenity and beauty, humans subjectivity moves differently than from motives of confusion or conflation.

 

Appearance is often cognitively accepted as not the thing itself and yet the awareness of subconscious influences through the flood of images humanity is faced with today. The effects on the afferent nervous system of the body invites viewers into deeper contemplation. In this way Appearances, while often considered superficial or vain, are understood as being within the body. In this way we can relate to the real as a means to reflect on depth from within. The afferent nervous system of the body functions inwardly. Therefore this work is aimed to instead of excite, but calm and inspire contemplation on notions of subjectivity, resources, dominance, supremacy, simpatico, depth and surface.

 

Discernment between the surface and the depth, reaches an overlap through the imaginary, an in this series, the images which vary subtly, inviting quiet within the viewer. From this deep well of quiet, fantastic colours of resplendence invites awareness. In these works the notions of subjectivity, resources, dominance, supremacy, simpatico, depth and surface come into question. The apparatus of both photography and human sight are realized in a format evoking stillness and movement. Serenity becomes eery, beauty becomes hypnotic, and digital enhancements of film emulsions remind viewers of the symbolism of sand and time through granularity and smoothness. The iridescent wave forms of Oslofjord invite reflection on the relationship humans have with water, imagination, vision, and the sacred. In the image, fantasy can appear real and possible: oil and water mixing, the mutability in reflection, the eternal motive to capture and share. The Mouvements series reaches to understand eros and screen technology in a pragmatic way. These questions about vision, nature and technology are about our relationships with life. The viewing distances engage viewers’ senses (of stillness and movement) and of the ways appearances can obfuscate and reveal, expand or contract.

 

The ethics of water, mineral resources, labor and other sacrifices are well documented to have irreversible costs. Through the apparatus of photography and vision, discernments between serenity and subjugation, the hypnotic and active invite openness instead of drawn conclusions. The digital enhancement of the film emulsions evoke granularity of sand, often symbolised relative to time.

 

The original film exposures of the iridescent wave forms appear considerably different than the works presented here. The complete series is to invite reflection on the relationship humans have with water, imagination, vision, and the sacred. By way of the the image, fantasy can appear real and possible: oil and water mixing, the mutability in reflection, the eternal motive to capture and share. The Mouvements series invites understandings of eros and effects of screen technology in a pragmatic way. Our human relationships with the connection to life and each other is what is at stake.

 

Furthermore, I learned through making these works as well as many others, I understand the field of viewing as holographic and, at least, metaphorically containing woven elements. What is seen is woven by the earth’s spinning, gravity, space, and the time runs through all these as well as our bodies. Therefore the images are also fibers of being, and forever altered the future of my work with the camera. Tactility relates to the senses, and the ability for art to open up the senses and invite remembering, feeling, moving into serenity and beauty brings me continued motivation to realise these works in new mediums and installed at several sites.

The series is from Virtual Material, a body of work including: Mouvements, Teknovisuell Experience, Sonidos, Ultraviolet Forest, videos, installations, projections, wall coverings, acrylic panels, garments.  Concept mock-ups for commercial installations in mosaics, metal, custom panels and other materials for facades, walls, and public art spaces. Contact: mariammanart@icloud.com

EXHIBITIONS AND PRODUCT MOCKUPS