Sean Higgins
Monday, 2 November 2009
Work from Difficulties with Interplanetary Travel.
“Through his pieces, Higgins prods at the human instinct to associate images with the familiar. Namely, there is a tendency for viewers to look for a “real” object/place that exists or has existed when confronted with an amorphous shape in nature, like a cloud or unidentifiable landmass. Through Difficulties with Interplanetary Travel, Higgins challenges the viewers to see beyond the recognizable and absolute. He adds uncertainty to the images by closely cropping scenes, thereby removing the images’ contexts, or employing interesting angles that impede the viewers from seeing the full panoramic surroundings. He recreates the world as we know it into a new fictional world where time and space remain ambiguous. “Real” landscapes, outer space, technology, dreams and memories combine to create a new environment beyond the standard confines of time and space. Are these images from the past, conjured from memory, or from the future? The viewers can never be sure if they are witnessing places/shapes that are familiar to them, intergalactic formations from planets beyond view or awareness, and/or something imagined/created by the artist or within the viewers’ imagination. For Higgins, his work is “About a place-but not necessarily a place you can go to.”
“…For the figures that appear in the sky make no sense…they are purely chance effects. It is man who, being naturally inclined to imitation, confers a meaning upon them as well as a relative permanence, by associating them with the idea of the creatures that they evoke” – Collette Blanchard Gallery