Port hiver

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on October 10, 2015 at 9:00pm

Curator’s Comments:   

 

Your colorful abstract images draw immediate attention with their otherworldly splendor.  The mind attempts to piece together recognizable photographic fragments within a pleasurable disorder.  But my appreciation for the more subtle distortions grows as I come back to view Port Hiver.  While it doesn’t evoke the bright reflective glare of sun and water merging into mirrored and duplicated prisms, it does create a momentary figure-ground uncertainty.  Fielding the boats within the background brings the picture into a “normal” or representational focus, but the snowy white foliage in the foreground carries much of the textural interest in the piece.  The vertical striations suggest icicles against glass, as well as moving rivulets of water.  These are decidedly elemental forces coming up against the human vessel. But from a purely formal standpoint, the composition employs a lacy structure, balancing openings of darker blue with glimpses into the objects in the background.  The limited color palette unifies the space, but suspends most of the visual weight, and the viewers’ pictorial expectations.