CORNWALL– The Cornwall Library presents artist Sarah Prud’homme’s new series, Inhuman Time, a meditation on stones gathered from the New England coast, opening with a reception Jan. 21.
According to a statement: Prud’homme’s stones were developed over 400 million years back, when volcanic magma was moved to the earth’s surface area. Mainly basalt, they have high concentrations of magnesium, iron, and calcium, which gives them a rich black shade. As they cooled and were shaped by ocean wave action they ended up being smooth and round, which mesmerized the artist’s eye.
In making these photos, Prud’homme utilized a digital electronic camera to capture twenty to fifty images of each stone, which she layered in Photoshop to expose what typically leaves our look. While this technique was established out of necessity– to get rid of the medium format electronic camera’s shallow depth of field– Prud’homme welcomed it and used it to enlarge the stones to lot of times their real size. These images examine a stone’s surface from its center to its external edges, resulting in a hyperfocused structure that appears both flat and three-dimensional. This highlights the reality that photography develops its own truth instead of just recording reality.
Inhuman Time consists of stones of different shapes and hues, each of which shows their point of origin. In her images, Prud’homme eliminates single stones from a congested beach and examines them carefully, which individualizes and monumentalizes them. The stones’ smooth roundness and blackness versus an infinity of white exposes their ineffable, immanent qualities. In her grid of a lots oval stones, Prud’homme highlights the resemblances and subtle differences between each example. The stones’ relatively identical shapes cause the eye to compare and contrast them, and encourages viewers to end up being active observers. The grid is in the art historical tradition of “typologies,” exemplified by the work of minimalist artists such as Karl Blossfeldt and Bernd and Hilla Becher.
With Inhuman Time, Prud’homme hopes the audience will find something about beauty/art/science/ math/nature/reality/ fact. Or at least review the fact that people and stones are composed of the same minerals, that deep space is adjoined, which our survival depends upon this awareness.
Prud’homme lives in Brooklyn, NY, and invests as much time as she can at her household’s home in Cornwall, she stated. She has an MFA from the School of Visual Arts. Her thesis was a series of cubes mounted with abstract pictures of the body that was consisted of in “Somatogenics,” a show curated by Cindy Sherman, Sarah Charlesworth, and Laurie Simmons at Artists Space. Prud’homme’s work has actually appeared at Brooklyn Cottage, and in numerous group displays in New York.
Inhuman Time, Pictures by Sarah Prud’homme, ranges from Jan. 21 to March 4, with an artist’s reception from 5-7 p.m. Jan. 21. The general public is welcome; registration is required. Go to cornwalllibrary.org/events/