2011
Garden of Light
Gallery 175, Seoul, Korea.
A group exhibition selected by Juyong Lee with work by: Andrew Pepper, Setsuko Ishii, Paula Dawson, Julius Pileckas, Juyong Lee, Jaeeon Byun, Ray Park, David Warren, Sunhee Joo, Bokyung Jung, Martina Mrongovious, Boyang An and Pearl John.
Holography suffers from a pretense - being something it is not.
The spectacle of its cleverness is often softened through its presentation to the viewer, framed to make it more like 'traditional', acceptable and familiar visual works.
Some of my earlier pieces have attempted to interrogate that 'acceptable' mode of display and place holographic images, raw and unframed, in spaces and environments where other methods of support become integral to the installation.
Vertical Liquid Supported strips down the visual mechanics of holography to its basics. The image of the shadow of liquid protrudes slightly beyond the surface of the rectangular glass plate - a tentative insurgence into the viewers' domain (your space).
There has been human intervention in the form of a swiped finger mark curving across the centre of the piece which disturbs the liquid and recording process, moving it slightly 'away' from an analytical demonstration.
These marks are manifest entirely through the technical process of holographic recording. Shadows of liquid cannot exist, unsupported, in 'our space', yet they have an elegant familiarity reminiscent of marks on fogged and condensated windows. The rectangular holographic plate is exposed in its entirety, unframed, and held vertical by use of an industrial 'G' clamp.
The clamp is 'worn' and has been used to support other materials during domestic and sculptural constructions. Here it 'holds' the glass sheet so that it can be viewed from a variety of angles and positions. Unlike many holographic works, there is no desired 'viewing zone'. At points the liquid shadows are visible but they fade away from view as an observer moves round the piece. Looking at the piece from the back, or from directly above, is as valid as when the content of the hologram is visible.
Ways of looking should not always be held ransom to the medium we are asked to look at.
Andrew Pepper
September 2011
Installation view at Gallery 175
Image Juyong Lee
Exhibition dates 1st - 18th November, 2011