IN ITS OWN SHADOW, 1830 (2020-2021)

 

"And what else did I learn? That the light is born from the darkness to usurp its ancient rank."

 

Li Young Lee

 

The work I present finds its origin in the inspiration derived from reading the collection of poems "Behind my Eyes" by the poet Li Young Lee. Through an exercise of deconstruction and construction, using the light of the city of London as a central object to represent, I propose a journey of reflective immersion that investigates

the notions of time, space, light and colour.

 

In order to capture the light, throughout 2020, I took a daily photograph of the London sky from the same location. Subsequently, based on this photographic archive of the same space at consecutive moments and, using digital tools, I decompose each photograph into five colour stripes. These colours are transferred, from the virtual to the material, to extremely thin coloured films, each a few microns in size. This process culminates in a chromatic display composed of 1830 colour gradations, organised cumulatively in six towers that vary in height from 2 meters to 1 meter that, like the original creations, depends on daylight and weather conditions, portraying the natural variations.

 

These films or light filters become transformative agents, turning contemplation into an activity and observation into a journey. The piece is activated as we move, generating chromatic oscillations that appear and disappear, varying according to the position, distance and height of the viewer with respect to the work. Another aspect to highlight is the expansion of the work through the coloured shadow it generates, where the shadow becomes light.

 

This process of fragmentation and accumulation not only reveals a deep interest in space, the viewer's experience and perception of it, but also a way of cataloguing the physical form of time, space and light, and visualising them through a card of colour, confronting presence and absence, the material and the immaterial, the visible and the invisible, transparency and opacity.

 

Counting time through colours, because in the end, colour is light.