honorable mention
Tim van den Oudenhoven germany
title
Horror Vacui
The little islands of the landscape that are shown, are meant to attract, to feel uncanny, both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.
While my work employs different media, and sometimes very different styles, the methodology and inspirations are generally the same.
In my urban nightscapes, architectural spaces are explored that were designed to make man disappear into a routinous anonymous blob in a generic city maze. The dark spaces border on a play between aestheticism and nihilism, and the often fragile printing materials might reveal which one might prevail in the end.
My more metaphotographic works also deal with concepts of disappearing. Objets trouvés, security camera footage, and other types of photographic experiments are all employed to point to the medium’s limitations of preserving a memory or a moment in time, and to highlight its complete incapability to represent reality.
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entry description
The series “Horror Vacui” (Fear of the Void) shows isolated nocturnal landscapes in oceans of nightly black. Often described as a coping mechanism, this fear of the void is reflected by using pitch black, a surface that cannot be filled any more. The landscape, the horizon, as well as any other element that could be used as a reference point are entirely absent and are left to the viewer's imagination. Viewers need to fill the void to perceive the image as a landscape.The little islands of the landscape that are shown, are meant to attract, to feel uncanny, both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.
about the photographer
Man’s absence, or at least his vanishing into anonymity, is what I strive for in my works. Photography always serves as a starting point in my artistic process, but through experimentation, different media are always a possible endpoint. Abstraction tends to play an important role – an uncanny distance between Viewer and Work is a prerequisite.While my work employs different media, and sometimes very different styles, the methodology and inspirations are generally the same.
In my urban nightscapes, architectural spaces are explored that were designed to make man disappear into a routinous anonymous blob in a generic city maze. The dark spaces border on a play between aestheticism and nihilism, and the often fragile printing materials might reveal which one might prevail in the end.
My more metaphotographic works also deal with concepts of disappearing. Objets trouvés, security camera footage, and other types of photographic experiments are all employed to point to the medium’s limitations of preserving a memory or a moment in time, and to highlight its complete incapability to represent reality.
back to gallery
