I was about 17/18 when I made this piece, after being exposed to the work of David Hockney, a wonderful english painter and photographer that I recommend to anyone interested in either. And absolutely amazing with polaroid photographs, here a link to his webpage, so you can take a look without the tedious open-new-tab -> type-name -> misspell-name -> copy-from-other-tab -> finally-getting-what-one-wants ! :)
The link:
http://www.davidhockney.co/works/photos/composite-polaroids
Now his use of photography can be compared to Picasso's use of colour and shapes. And this cubism inspired way of taking a static one-shot-one-perspective medium and transforming it into a bigger picture where the whole in composed of hundreds of different shoots and perspectives is amazing to say the least. And it does not only change the end product; his so called "Composite Polaroids or joiners" are not just an assemblage of polaroid pictures, but because of their placement together, the whole idea of what each single polaroid means changes entirely (Gestalt Theory is an amazing and quite simple thing that I would recommend to anyone doing collages, assemblages, crumplages ((after Jiří Kolář's work - wonderful artist from Prague)) or any work, where the whole is composed of small bits - and I know, everything kinda is, so... you know.
So by using so manny photographs, each of them becomes only a view, a glimpse into the subject and makes me immediately think of the question of what reality is, how we perceive it and of course - do we all perceive it equally (probably not, right?). So a simple gesture as this does not only make the work much more active (and photography is a still medium, it does not move, even if it represents movement its a still image), but it changes the meaning of what an image is entirely. To me, the collage or what I do now, photo tapestry has become my main workhorse, because of all the potential communication that it can produce with the viewer, the active representation of time and space it can have (and still be a totally immobile medium physically).
So here is my first ever done work in this medium, with a description that is also part of its representation and all the technical details to get the idea of size and whatnot. I would love to hear from anyone interested in this; your thoughts, ideas, if you would like to burn this abomination, you name it. I'm open for opinions, but the constructive ones are usually better I think!
Billiard, 2013, 121 x 122.1 cm, photo tapestry, 96 ultra-gloss photos on plywood panel, edition 1/1, private collection, Berlin, Germany.
Billiard is a depiction, a snapshot of the ambiguity of a game of billiard and its emotional and physical presence in time and space. By looking closely one can relive the player’s emotional experience during the game — the excitement over a good shot, the anticipation of waiting for the opponents next turn and finally the inevitable conclusion of the game.