|
|
|
PRESS
https://www.paloaltoonline.com/arts/2021/03/03/creativity-and-joy-palo-alto-hopes-to-combat-the-ongoing-pandemic-blahs-with-new-public-art
August, 2019. Curatorial Review.
Nature: Hiding in Plain Sight:
Photographs and Videos by Robin Apple
Peninsula Museum of Art, Arabella Decker Gallery
August 18 - October 27, 2019
Reception Sunday August 18, 2-4pm. Artist talk Sunday Oct. 20, 2-4pm
Science and art are sometimes considered to be equal and opposite realms of experience or modes of consciousness, as C.P. Snow’s influential 1959 article and later book, The Two Cultures, postulated. It’s true that some artists are science-challenged and some scientists are culturally deprived, but some people manage to live in both spheres, to live as anachronistic Renaissance men and women, so to speak, generalists in a culture of specialists.
The clinical psychologist Robin Apple brings to her therapeuticand her photographic practices the same concerns and sensibility. Her website reads:
As a psychologist, she values balance and integration, expression, opening oneself to new experiences, and physical movement. As a photographer, she favors highly colored images that incorporate angles, blends, blur, and motion to combine elements of abstraction and reality in a unique way. As both photographer and psychologist Ms. Apple views people and experiences as contradictory, multidimensional and nuanced; she believes in many possibilities rather than just one right way. She hopes that her images stimulate curiosity and wonder.
Apple explores nature through digital photography, which allows greater freedom to the photographer both in searching for images—no bulky, balky equipment—and in the manipulations available through various iPhone apps and filters. In her aesthetic practice, there is no contradiction between the real world and its digital simulacrum or interpretation: nature is in plain sight, but hidden by familiarity, as mystics contend. The internal essences or aspects of objects (so valued by the philosophically inclined modernist artists of a century ago) become visible to us only by the defamiliarizations of today’s digital magic, akin to the Dadaist/Surrealist derangement of the senses (dérèglement des sens) and overthrowing of reality. But Apple in unconcerned with shocking the bourgeoisie; with their bright palettes and floating images of animal and plant life set free from gravity as in a dream, her photographs are lyrical interpretations of reality shaped and informed by subjectivity: Kandinsky’s “inner necessity.”
Found objects that are manmade and natural, day-to-day situations mostly outdoors intrigue me. I use my iPhone to capture and transform combinations of these into colorful and unique, two-dimensional images using post-processing applications that facilitate collage and blending and colorizing techniques. For Nature: Hiding in Plain Sight, I had my images printed on plexiglass; painted them with gold-plate acrylic paint and glass diamond dust,; and then framed them in acrylic shadow boxes to enhance the sense of depth and dimension—as if I'm inviting the viewer to walk into the surreal and naturalistic scene that's been created. I’d describe the artistry behind my style as something along the lines of: feelings-based abstract-figurative-impressionist-pop. Because I’m trained as a clinical psychologist emotions are never too far from my awareness and inform my work to a great extent. I strive for a style that is ever-evolving and growing.
Featured in this show are eighteen digital photographs and two videos set to music: one of still images and one of moving images.— DeWitt Cheng
https://www.robinapplepeopleshots.com and https://www.instagram.com/robinapplepeopleshots
https://www.paloaltoonline.com/arts/2021/03/03/creativity-and-joy-palo-alto-hopes-to-combat-the-ongoing-pandemic-blahs-with-new-public-art
August, 2019. Curatorial Review.
Nature: Hiding in Plain Sight:
Photographs and Videos by Robin Apple
Peninsula Museum of Art, Arabella Decker Gallery
August 18 - October 27, 2019
Reception Sunday August 18, 2-4pm. Artist talk Sunday Oct. 20, 2-4pm
Science and art are sometimes considered to be equal and opposite realms of experience or modes of consciousness, as C.P. Snow’s influential 1959 article and later book, The Two Cultures, postulated. It’s true that some artists are science-challenged and some scientists are culturally deprived, but some people manage to live in both spheres, to live as anachronistic Renaissance men and women, so to speak, generalists in a culture of specialists.
The clinical psychologist Robin Apple brings to her therapeuticand her photographic practices the same concerns and sensibility. Her website reads:
As a psychologist, she values balance and integration, expression, opening oneself to new experiences, and physical movement. As a photographer, she favors highly colored images that incorporate angles, blends, blur, and motion to combine elements of abstraction and reality in a unique way. As both photographer and psychologist Ms. Apple views people and experiences as contradictory, multidimensional and nuanced; she believes in many possibilities rather than just one right way. She hopes that her images stimulate curiosity and wonder.
Apple explores nature through digital photography, which allows greater freedom to the photographer both in searching for images—no bulky, balky equipment—and in the manipulations available through various iPhone apps and filters. In her aesthetic practice, there is no contradiction between the real world and its digital simulacrum or interpretation: nature is in plain sight, but hidden by familiarity, as mystics contend. The internal essences or aspects of objects (so valued by the philosophically inclined modernist artists of a century ago) become visible to us only by the defamiliarizations of today’s digital magic, akin to the Dadaist/Surrealist derangement of the senses (dérèglement des sens) and overthrowing of reality. But Apple in unconcerned with shocking the bourgeoisie; with their bright palettes and floating images of animal and plant life set free from gravity as in a dream, her photographs are lyrical interpretations of reality shaped and informed by subjectivity: Kandinsky’s “inner necessity.”
Found objects that are manmade and natural, day-to-day situations mostly outdoors intrigue me. I use my iPhone to capture and transform combinations of these into colorful and unique, two-dimensional images using post-processing applications that facilitate collage and blending and colorizing techniques. For Nature: Hiding in Plain Sight, I had my images printed on plexiglass; painted them with gold-plate acrylic paint and glass diamond dust,; and then framed them in acrylic shadow boxes to enhance the sense of depth and dimension—as if I'm inviting the viewer to walk into the surreal and naturalistic scene that's been created. I’d describe the artistry behind my style as something along the lines of: feelings-based abstract-figurative-impressionist-pop. Because I’m trained as a clinical psychologist emotions are never too far from my awareness and inform my work to a great extent. I strive for a style that is ever-evolving and growing.
Featured in this show are eighteen digital photographs and two videos set to music: one of still images and one of moving images.— DeWitt Cheng
https://www.robinapplepeopleshots.com and https://www.instagram.com/robinapplepeopleshots