The Arts Council of New Westminster presents:
“Collision 1”
by Frederick Popowich
November 2 – 27,2016
Wednesday 1 – 8pm, Thursday – Sunday 1 – 5pm
Opening Reception: Wednesday, November 2, 6 – 8pm
Artist Talk: Sunday, November 13, 2pm
*ARTIST WILL BE IN ATTENDANCE ON WEEKENDS*
ARTIST STATEMENT
Collision is an ongoing project of mine that explores the idea of wreckage and the relationship of man and machine through the depiction of spaces, materials, and equipment associated with automotive collision repair.
The black and white print, with its emphasis on the language of tonal value, is a medium central to my own creative and commercial work. The images here explore light as a medium that simultaneously reveals and obscures the subject—at once disclosing its structural properties and complicating its appearance.
By using various types of light during long exposures, subjects are revealed by enacting the process of their material form as their surfaces are brought into collision with multi-directional forms of light. The lighting techniques used in these images attempt to complicate the reading of the photograph, since the standard signals for reading light directionality and the falling of shadows have been intentionally obscured. The long exposure is a way of exploring the photographic medium’s capacity to not only encode time in a single moment but in a series of sequential passes as light collides with its subject in unusual, conflicting, and unpredictable ways.
The objective is to create an arresting of attention, to defamiliarize the subject by using light as both an agent of revelation and estrangement.
ARTIST TALK: SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2PM
Join Frederick Popowich as he discusses his Collision project, a black and white photographic series that explores the idea of wreckage and the relationship of man and machine through the depiction of spaces, materials, and equipment associated with automotive collision repair. Incorporating a range of influences, from German Romanticism to Sergei Eisenstein, from the English Romantic writers to Karsh, Avedon and other masters of the black and white print, he will discuss several of the key influences and aesthetic ideas behind the project.
