G.Mac De Verstrooister 2021
No Light (2019)
No Light 2019 at Camera (Centrul de Interes) Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Tryptich #1 - 120x80 / 80x120 / 120x80.
Title: CAPTURED CAUSTICS
On Instagram - jur.low
No Light (2018)
No Light (2016)
Analogue photography, light sources, large scale self made camera and Baryta paperNo Light (2016)
To look at light as the give and distance of the world, to conceive it as the ultimate giver of presence by paradoxically showing its contrary: darkness. This is the predicament posed by Amsterdam based artist Jurriaan Löwensteyn.
In his new series of images, the artist explores the artistic potential of artificial light emanating from old-fashion light bulbs – a banal domestic object whose importance we often ignore in our daily life. Not only does he questions conventional perceptions of light, but also established techniques of creating images based on a photographic process. Far from being simple representations of light, the images selected for this exhibition confront viewers with a complex phenomenon that gives new ways of engaging with textures, surfaces, and contrasts.
By tapping into the metaphorical use of light and darkness, Jurriaan Löwensteyn bypasses the longstanding paradigm of looking at the two elements through a lens of simple contrasts; instead, he shows how darkness unexpectedly appears as a projection of light. Light is not implied in these images as a natural phenomenon in the physical world, but as an invention in its own right. The effects of artificial light are contrasted with the physical properties of natural light in order to produce a figuration of light that is paradoxically projected onto the paper as shadows. Therefore, NO LIGHT confronts viewers with the manifold expressions of light as the shadows of a process.
This new series of sensitive images, the artist transforms light from the giver of presence to an element that sets forward darkness as a thing that makes absence an irrefutable presence. The critical inversion is performed through an innovative technique where the artist uses a large walk-in light box in which a light-bulb is placed close before the lens. Unlike traditional photographical techniques that rely on the existence of a negative image, Jurriaan imprints the shadows resulting from the exposure directly onto the photographic paper. The forms produced through this process border on the abstract, while all the time subtlety retaining the essence of the object’s figurative presence. The technique is original as it is challenging in its execution, as there can be only one copy of the image and a long process of creation. In the end, what Jurriaan Löwensteyn series of NO LIGHT makes us see is the shadow of light projected directly on paper - shadow of light as absence made psychically present.
Maria Rus Bojan
Bogdan Cornea
At Night (2012)
Digital photography, 60x80cm
The series explores the relationship between the human body, consciousness, and folds. The photographs are taken every half an hour during one night, tracing the artist’s erratic sleep pattern. Drawing on the aesthetic of the baroque, the images show the artist entangled in a succession of sumptuous white folds, projected against the bed’s dark sheet.
Shipyard, Stockholm at night, SE (2005)
Digital photography, 30x45cm
Alessandra, Rome, IT (2005)
Digital photography, 30x45cm
