Andrew Pepper, besides being an artist, is also a teacher and an organiser of exhibitions and symposia. This threefold vocation, exercised within the context of the art and holography area in which he is a leading figure, is grounded in his artistic and university training. It is also clearly visible in his artistic works and itinerary where it is combined with the idea and the feeling that technological means must be associated with a global human experience in order to enter frankly into the domain of the arts as well as having a true impact on the spectator who is invited to react to the artistic statement in his own way and thus encounter a parallel experience with that of the artist. Pepper’s position as a holographic artist can best be understood if one takes into account that he is both a light artist and a graphic artist. and that his artistic itinerary has led him logically from projected light sculptures to wall based holograms and to holographic floor pieces. In fact, the artist’s main endeavour is to create physical and conceptual links between these three forms of expression.
As a student, Andrew Pepper began working with light to produce installations and animated sculptures. What excited him was the fact that he could almost ‘draw’ in space by using a light projector that enabled him to intercept light with materials such as nylon or string, perspex or smoke. When he discovered holography in 1975, he understood at once that he could, by adopting this technique, counteract the ephemeral nature of his works by recording and documenting these light installations. However, it took Pepper many years to produce the first holograms which satisfied him and which he wanted to exhibit. These formed the Drawing Series of 1987, five wall holograms exploring the use of lines in space and their resulting shadows. A series of very analytical holograms grew out of them exploring the use of shadows and geometric structures.
There followed holograms of drawings which he could modify long after the photographic/holographic/chemical stage was completed, either by working on the surface of the plates, by drawing directly on the glass or by ‘distressing’ the emulsion and removing parts of it to draw ‘into’ the hologram. Andrew Pepper also produced holograms on the floor such as Positive Attempt (1989), a large glass circle with hologram fragments and projected light or Positive Attempt Redrawn (1991), twenty-one individual reflection holograms in three groups, illÌuminated from above with light from a slide projector used to project a drawing onto the floor and the holograms.
Both these floor pieces were conceived as a reaction to, and way of working through, intense personal and family events and confirmed Pepper’s basic engagement in connecting highly technical statements with strong human experiences, an endeavour developed throughout his artistic itinerary and in his other connected professional activities.
Frank Popper
Paris, October 1997
