About a Stone
17.10.2014 - 31.10.2014
Exhibition in the OSTEN Gallery, Skopje
Curator: Elena Veljanovska
Artist: Fleur Helluin
Fleur Helluin is starting her research on light by travelling backwards from a purely contemporary and new media interests to the basics of painting and it’s consisting elements. In this works she is researching the natural light, it’s importance for the drawing and it’s chromatic quality and saturation combining it with a sound experiment that transfers the audience into the site where the drawings are taken.
Her series of charcoal drawings ‘About a Stone’ are created in the Bronze-age archaeo- astronomical observatory Kokino, near Skopje. These drawings are a result of her residential stay in Skopje, and her focus to observe the observatory ambient by trying to understand the marker, the point of reference in space and try to connect it with the stone markers in Kokino. By doing so, she tries to capture the same sight and make sense of the space, and to see it in the same way as the predecessors who created it.
In her previous art works, Helluin is researching the aesthetic qualities of light and darkness, and their use in illuminating the contemporary - new media- society. In these series she shifts her interest from the exploration of light to focus on the night ambience surrounding the observatory. In her drawings one can thinly make out the outlines of the observatory, made visible by glimpses of moonlight shining through cracks in the surrounding mountains. The heavy charcoal layers absorb the light inside the drawing, creating an almost total darkness. This is contrasted by light reflected by a mixture of crushed varied Mica stone-dust coming from the surroundings of the observatory. The effect creates plasticity in the images. In this cycle the artist is again combining different historical approaches in painting with different historical art references, such as Anselm Kiefer’s painting aesthetics, the night photographs and paintings of Edward Steichen, and the relation of darkness in Rembrandt or Giotto’s oeuvre.
The second component of the work is the accompanying sound created with binaural beats. Binaural beats occur when two sounds of similar frequencies are presented one to each ear, either through stereo headphones or speakers. The brain then integrates them into one tone, or Binaural beat. These tones are then combined with sounds taken from Kokino, and will help the audience reach a sensitive state of mind to enjoy the work.
By combining these several different materials and using the variety of their material values in the drawings, and the additional sounds, the artist creates a small material collection of fragments that surround the observatory where the works are being created, and through a subtle spatial installation she enables the audience to glimpse the observatory’s sensible ambience. By adding the last work into the composition, she is affirming again her interests in interpreting different sources and meanings of light.
Her series of charcoal drawings ‘About a Stone’ are created in the Bronze-age archaeo- astronomical observatory Kokino, near Skopje. These drawings are a result of her residential stay in Skopje, and her focus to observe the observatory ambient by trying to understand the marker, the point of reference in space and try to connect it with the stone markers in Kokino. By doing so, she tries to capture the same sight and make sense of the space, and to see it in the same way as the predecessors who created it.
In her previous art works, Helluin is researching the aesthetic qualities of light and darkness, and their use in illuminating the contemporary - new media- society. In these series she shifts her interest from the exploration of light to focus on the night ambience surrounding the observatory. In her drawings one can thinly make out the outlines of the observatory, made visible by glimpses of moonlight shining through cracks in the surrounding mountains. The heavy charcoal layers absorb the light inside the drawing, creating an almost total darkness. This is contrasted by light reflected by a mixture of crushed varied Mica stone-dust coming from the surroundings of the observatory. The effect creates plasticity in the images. In this cycle the artist is again combining different historical approaches in painting with different historical art references, such as Anselm Kiefer’s painting aesthetics, the night photographs and paintings of Edward Steichen, and the relation of darkness in Rembrandt or Giotto’s oeuvre.
The second component of the work is the accompanying sound created with binaural beats. Binaural beats occur when two sounds of similar frequencies are presented one to each ear, either through stereo headphones or speakers. The brain then integrates them into one tone, or Binaural beat. These tones are then combined with sounds taken from Kokino, and will help the audience reach a sensitive state of mind to enjoy the work.
By combining these several different materials and using the variety of their material values in the drawings, and the additional sounds, the artist creates a small material collection of fragments that surround the observatory where the works are being created, and through a subtle spatial installation she enables the audience to glimpse the observatory’s sensible ambience. By adding the last work into the composition, she is affirming again her interests in interpreting different sources and meanings of light.