A VISUAL ANOMALY BY NICHOLAS KEYSE

CoCA - Centre of Contemporary Art Lux Gallery
in collaboration with Salt Lane Studios.

06.07.19 — 18.08.19

Stand too close and you will not see the full picture. Take a step back. Similar to pushing through dense sub-alpine wilderness, your view is impeded. Layer upon layer of foliage makes it impossible to choose which path to take. Stop, look, observe. Your path will be defined by open space. One that is initially unrecognisable. It will not reveal itself until first you have defined which directions are inaccessible.

Nicholas’s work in this series endeavours to communicate a sense of these crossroads. How do you replicate the feeling of such spaces to someone who has never walked off the beaten track? A photograph is too defined, another medium is needed, one that requires the audience to interpret, to fill in the gaps.

To generate the feel of the light and space Nicholas has reconfigured the captured scene by using a custom made digital programme. One which embarks on its own journey through a pixelated photographic image, recording its path into a myriad of vectored lines. Lines which follow the shape of the trees, the foliage, the light and the shadows all in one. These lines culminate back into a scene much like the collection of light rays captured by a camera. Similar to exposure, the more lines that overlay each other the more light it becomes. 48 hour renderings using a handmade drawing machine is the final step. White ink on black. Layer upon layer. The addition of light,
not obscuring like most.

Nicholas finds an endless supply of inspiration when venturing through the sub alpine forests of New Zealand’s Southern Alps. The element of survival, restraining of emotions to comfortably exist within these places of such harshness. Spaces and environments created by native organisms over centuries if not millennia. As we put the first steps into the unknown, are we defining these spaces we discover? Locking it into reality, all possibilities disappear and one defined space now remains.

Ink on Paper