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I ran into this piece in a post talking about Dutch Painter/Photographer Wim Bosch
Nr 34, 2008, pigmented ink on paper, aluminium, 108×130 cm
I tried clicking on it to enlarge so that I could figure out what was going on in all this pink, it wouldn’t cooperate, and insisted on staying small.
Wim Bosch has just released a new book of his work, and this piece above really grabbed my attention, (as you may have already gathered) so I went looking for more information. I found this blurb on the web site of MKgallerie.nl, which has shown Wim Bosch’s work several times.
Wim Bosch composes his pictures digitally from various photographs of his own and other illustrations, for example from home decorating magazines or from the Internet. As in painting, the empty, white surface forms the point of departure for the illusion of a reality reproduced in photography consisting primarily of independent pictorial elements. Though the individual components come together in a coherent order, the various perspectives, effects of light and shadow and the colour accentuations create an atmosphere of unreality and artificiality closely approaching photorealistic effects. A few details - a missing shadow, breaks in perspective or spatial relations that are not completely logical - reveal the constructed nature of the pictorial context which is nonetheless sealed off and held together by a homogeneous surface as an “outer skin”. Wim Bosch constructs interiors that with their furnishings and accessories look rather ordinary and everyday. But the items distributed in the room, a figure beyond the boundaries of the picture or abruptly cut off by them make the impression that an extraordinary event has just taken place here. As at the scene of a crime, something that has happened seems to be concentrated here, and the viewer attempts to investigate, but without being able to find enough clues about it. However, a context of action can hardly be put together. What becomes visible is rather a structural order in the interplay of various ornamental structures, perspectival situations and pictorial analogies. The point is therefore not so much to link the pictorial worlds to an external reality as to discover relationships and contradictions within the picture.
Some more examples
Blush,2004, pigmented ink on paper, aluminium, 90 x 123 cm
Rug, 2004, pigmented ink on paper, aluminium, 50 x 130 cm
Hi Kimberly,
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Going back through some old blogs, I noticed this hadn’t gotten any comments and it deserved some.
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>The point is therefore not so much to link the pictorial worlds to an external reality as to discover relationships and contradictions within the picture.
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While the images bothered me because of the obtrusiveness of one element over another, on second and third looks I realized that’s what also made the pictures intriguing. The obstructions made me want to study the images harder, to see what lay behind. The reflection of the flowers on the window was not only intriguing (there might be a story going on inside that room) but also visually beautiful. The others, like the flowers in front of the woman or the curtain obscuring the girl on the floor, made my mind fill in the missing details.
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The pictures break the old rules, but they do so in a way that says it’s no mistake. In breaking the rules for some unknown and clearly intentional reason, they’re worth a second look and even more.
Orcabob - Thank you :-) I was surprised at the lack of comments here because I also found his work intriguing. Composition wise and in the way the "outside" object pulls you into the photo in a different way than if you had an unobstructed view of the scene.
Its like the difference between looking at something in clear view, when you are in clear view as well, and peeping.
Absolutely, re: peeping. The element of voyeurism does add to the viewing experience. Not only does it suggest something we might not should be seeing, but it forces us to "fill in the blanks."
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In the two sample images, the artist has also made the "peeped" scenes a bit unnatural. Maybe it’s to make the voyeurism a little more sordid. In the first pic, notice the tacky wallpaper. It provides backing to the big obstruction up front, but coupled with the classic furniture it makes the scene itself look a bit ridiculous. And the second picture shows a room that appears to be Photoshopped together. The coffee table looks "ginormous" in comparison to the woman who seems too small. The loveseat is at an odd angle to the wall behind it. The scene just looks odd. The perspective of the room is screwed up and possibly ours is, too, by proxy.
I didn’t notice the proportions in the last image…you could also find a lot of meaning to the position of the man in relevance to the woman - him standing, Larger than life in the foreground, her sitting, bent, small in the background - which keeps within the lines of our "screwed up" perspective…
Orson Welles played with perspective like that in "Citizen Kane." In certain scenes such as the newsroom, he used low ceilings and cameras positioned low and shooting up at actors (usually Kane himself) to make them look giant in comparison to other characters.
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There’s a lot of cinematic techniques in that movie that could be applied to still photography.
There’s something reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock in these images, too. Especially the first image. Hitchcock loved to use a voyeuristic POV to let the audience see something of what was unfolding, but as the audience they were helpless to do anything about it.
I love AH ‘rear window’ :-)
Hi Wim - thanks for stopping by.