becoming-animal
The LSBU Degree Show 2009 opend on Friday last week and was a success. Thank you all who could turn up and I hope you enjoyed the evening as much as I did! I know I'm not smiling on this photo, but I was actually super happy. :)
All the images can be seen in their final form at my web site www.karelpolt.com.
The exhibition is still open from today until Thursday, every day from 10am to 5pm.
London South Bank University
Keyworth centre
Keyworth Street
Tube station: Elephant & Castle
Artist's statement:
becoming-animal
Digitally composed photographic prints, 744mm x 744mm
Derived from my personal experience of living in London for the past five years, this series of images examines the philosophically occult notion of ‘becoming-animal’, as developed by French philosophers Deleuze and Guattari in their book A Thousand Plateaus. For me, the concentration of humanity that London represents with its millions of people, cityscape and technology, is a paradoxically repulsive yet beguilingly seductive mixture. The availability of culture and modernity is weighed down by lack of personal space and wild nature. In a sense, I am searching for ways to reconnect with the natural world without giving up the comforts of civilisation.
Becoming-animal follows the subject at a domestic location, yet it appears that this creature is somewhat out of place. Whilst following the rules of a human’s home, he has either forgotten how to behave as a human or has never learnt to use the rather simple technology and cultural codes. Is the physical metamorphosis a result of a psychological condition due to living in a confined claustrophobic place, locked in, away from other humans? Taking advantage of posture, lighting, facial expressions, ‘the wild look’ and possibilities of digital image manipulation, I have juxtaposed the familiar contemporary setting with elements of animals as seen on wild life documentary programmes. This is kitchen or bathroom is disturbingly the subject’s natural habitat.
In the centre of my working practice is the contradiction of using pixel-based image manipulation for introducing the subject to a more animalistic state. The body shapes and colours are composed of several exposures and edited in post-production, resulting in a seamless montage, creating a new photographic reality. Similarly to the creature, the physical space on the images as been reconstructed in the computer. There are elements added, removed, copied from other shots or rearranged within the space.


































