Reciprocity

In my art practice, I am passionate about exploring how humans navigate and construct our world and societies, but at the same time I am amazed and deeply fascinated by the invisible aspect of our existence. I have always been attracted to the unseen, the mystical, and the inexplicable. We are part of a universe that we only perceive through our bodily senses—our five senses, plus our vestibular and proprioception senses. The immaterial part of our world and universe, such as ideas, sensitivity, and vibration is not perceived tangibly as matter because we cannot physically understand it. Yet, we have tools such as feelings and intuition that we can develop, and we have science to broaden our understanding of the unseen. A large part of my artistic practice over the past 20 years has been using technology to invent ways and processes that reflect and give form to these invisible forces that surround us. Over the past twenty years, I have developed new techniques in my artwork and investigated how to use colours, sound, and photographic and cinematic processes to explore these unseen dimensions.

Reciprocity is part of an ongoing series I am working on called "Interplay, Enmeshment, and Matter" which brings together a collection of multisensory pieces, combining photography, video, and sound, that delves more deeply into the parallel states of change and stasis, exploring the contrast between being creatures of nature while also distancing ourselves from it and our tendency to pay homage to nature’s beauty while also destroying it. Especially with the onset of the Covid-19 virus, it is evident that man and nature are completely intertwined, despite how our decisions and actions deny that fact.

To create the images, I print large-scale black and white or color photographs and scrape their surfaces with razor blades, removing the pigments and leaving ink dust, cuts, and holes in the paper, deleting some of the distinct elements. The act of erasing is a repetitive and violent gesture that represents the impact of humans on nature, and is an aesthetic statement as well as a social statement. Afterward, I rephotograph the damaged prints with a medium format camera and use both traditional and digital tools to recolor, add enhancements, and reorganize the image-creating a new final piece out of the deconstruction of the old one. My work is accompanied by a soundtrack of the sounds made during the production process, and enhanced with video showing anti-gravitational dust and particles that move around, suggesting natural elements and forces at play.

For more information on this series, please visit : https://www.maurenbrodbeck.com/viewing-room/2-interplay-enmeshment-and-matter-investigating-the-invisible-movements-and-stasis/