Omar Elkharadly answered a few questions for me regarding his work, Allegory, currently on display in the 12th Annual Emerging Artist Exhibition, CORPUS LUCIDA at InterAccess.
Omar Elkharadly, Allegory (2009 - ongoing)
Jessica
Cappuccitti: Where and when did you get
the idea for this piece and how has it evolved since its first conception?
Omar
Elkharadly: The work you saw at InterAccess,
titled Allegory is from a
larger body of work that was most recently shown in Guelph. You can see installation shots and a small
write-up from that show here:
The
first prototype installation of this work took place in 2008, which had the simple
setup of the reflective screen, projectors behind, and the viewer in-between.
The viewer(s) would interact with their own 3d shadow. (See sketch from when
the project was conceived below.)
Omar Elkharadly, photo courtesy of the artist
As
you may have read in Farah Yusuf's write-up, the title is a reference to
Plato's Allegory of the Cave, where fundamental questions about reality,
perception, form, representation, and truth
are addressed. Initially, the work focused primarily on the mechanisms
of perception by demonstrating what shouldn't be possible - a three dimensional
shadow on a two dimensional surface - what you see isn't what you get. The
mechanism by which this is achieved is almost poetically simple and is in no
way concealed from the viewer.
The
current incarnation of Allegory at InterAccess is part of a body of light-based
photo installations that seek to achieve a material self-awareness in the form
of visual tautology. For example, a
slide projector containing a photograph of a light bulb that when projected
against a surface actually serves to illuminate the surrounding space.
The
work Light Switch (2011) consisted of a slide projector wired to a
pull-chain light switch. The viewer is invited to pull the chain that can turn
on and off the slide projector containing an image of a light bulb.
Omar Elkharadly, Light Switch (2011), photo courtesy of the artist
Where
Light Switch can be seen in terms of tautology, Allegory can be
seen in terms of paradox. I like to
think of a paradox as a tautology with a twist. Allegory's pull chain, rather than switching on
a projection of light, functions to switch on a projection of shadow, (which,
interestingly enough, is what all transparency-based photographs actually are!)
Going
back to Plato's Allegory, shadows are what we cave-dwellers see; subordinate to
the forms they are being cast from. In
the case of our present Allegory, the age-old hierarchy of form and
representation is complicated by the decision to paint the lampshade black. As a result, the shade becomes a
representation of its own shadow. I like
to think of it as the kind of proposition Captain Kirk would pose to a 23rd
Century Plato-droid in order to cause its head to explode in a most climactic
fashion.
JC: Is
this something that you plan to build on/keep going with? If so, where do you see it going?
OE: I've
learned a lot about my practice in the last couple of years. The main thing being that, while I do have a
studio, it is more accurate to call it a workshop or lab (the messy kind). I develop the bare-bones technical means to
execute an idea, and then I shelf it until I have the opportunity to create it
for a space and install it. As a result,
my work does not exist until I have the opportunity to show it, and until I
have the opportunity to show it, I cannot truly see it for myself. This is one of the reasons that Allegory has
continued to evolve since its inception, and with each iteration it grows into
its own. My goal as an artist is to make
intelligent, self-aware work.
Allegory will cease to exist a few weeks from
the time of this writing, and that makes me pretty sad. Every time it has come back though, it has
adapted to its new environment in some way that I was not able to predict.
As stated earlier, Allegory was developed as
part of a larger body of work. That body
of work explores the ontology of photography - the mediation of light. Allegory is in many ways integral to that
exploration, and the mechanism which allows Allegory to exist is currently
spread across my studio in the forms of projectors, bits of polarized plastic,
stereoscopic slide photographs, and sheets of tin foil, some more crumpled than
others.
Allegory, Installation view, photo courtesy of the artist
The non-crazy answer: I feel as though
Allegory covers very rich cognitive territory that I remain thoroughly
engrossed in, and I see much that has yet to be explored here.
