I believe that Ori’s work is going to be very useful to me in my practice, I have always been very interested in science and mathematics and sort of wish I had gone into something to do with these subjects, however I had a very rough time during my A-level Maths and only got a D which brought me down a fair amount both physically and mentally. But, from watching Ori’s presentation on his work and how he is inspired by such amazing people of these types of fields, it has made me realize that I can, if I wanted, bring these subjects into my photography. I really do think his talk is going to change my outlook on photography and help me realize that I can do literally anything with this subject,.
Ori’s work is very highly influenced by different classical paintings and different era’s of art and science. He began his presentation by referring to Juan Sanchez Cotan’s work, a Spanish painter, he was interested in creating an equilibrium out of this concrete structure and so Ori wanted to recreate this idea, he stated that he took the liberty to change some of the objects used, I found this quite funny, not too sure why, from this piece of work, he create a short film and honestly, I found it to be so beautiful and though provoking. I really feel i can relate to this in my current Greek mythology work and believe that I will refer to him a lot now. He seems to be very interested in symbolism and showing different intense emotions through his work; anger, love, brutality.
It is clear that he is strongly influenced by history, science and the movement of time. Through the talk, I could see that he puts a lot of thought into the concept of each painting and is really moved by each and every aspect.
He created a piece of work called ‘On reflection’ which was inspired by Jan Brueghel the Elder and his 17th century paintings which are show below.
I really cannot get over the amount of research Ori had put into these paintings, realizing that this is the era where humans were beginning to be able to travel further distances. There is no way the flowers in these paintings could have bloomed in the same area at the same time, so there is a large element of human intervention within these paintings. I love this idea of how humans and nature connect and find it amazing how much we have been able to evolve and improve technology in such a short time frame, these flowers all came from different parts of the world and so this painter was able to create a beautiful bouquet of flowers, which may not have been possible a few years prior. Ori made a very compelling point when he stated that what we believe to be completely natural has been entirely fabricated by human intervention, and that just really opened up my mind as to how easy it is to deceive a viewer.
His response to this painting was beyond anything I have seen before, and I am obsessed with it. He mad sure to use synthetic materials from the natural world to keep this deceiving theme going, he create an entire studio filled with mirrors and instead of focusing on the flowers themselves, he had two cameras, one which focused on the surface of the mirrors and one which focused on the subject within the mirrors.
It is so interesting to have this exploration on the relationship of the real world and the virtual world, seeing something through a screen and I feel this really relates to today’s world, as we are not so used to seeing everything and everyone through our screens. It is interesting how Ori created this work in 2014 yet i feel it is a lot more relevant now. I do find it fascinating how the focus on the second image where he is focusing on the surface of the glass looks very surreal, it looks very much like a painting.
Once the mirrors were shattered, we can see some of the same flowers twice, within different mirrors, making the art very deceiving and very interesting. As another response to this work, he created a series of films where we see the glass shattering and taking every little reflection with it, seeing how one big mirror can turn into loads of tiny little mirrors is also very attractive.
He then went on to show us some more recent work which was inspired by Giorgio Morandi and his paintings 20th century, this project was one of the most alluring to me as I have a very strong interest in time and how it passes.
He stated that this work was based on creating alternate realities of the work, he would recreate a similar still life image to that of Morandi’s and then create a whole other dimension of how it could have been by smashing the pieces. Something he said which I really connected with was this idea that the image could have been taken a fraction before or a fraction after and it would have been completely different, yet this is the only possibility at that specific moment in time. I grew up being very interested in Sci-fi, Doctor Who especially, so the idea of time is very attractive to me, how it moves, how we move in it, how we are living in the past, the future and the present. Everything I have just written is now in the past and everything am about to write is in the future, yet it is now in the past. This may seem boring or obvious to some people, but to me I find it to be so interesting how time is fixed. I could talk for hours about these types of things, and this is one of the reasons i want to bring time frames into my current work and be working with stop motion and animations as I find them to be very interesting.
I really do think this talk has completely changed my outlook on photography and how I will complete my practice from now on, and I really think Ori Gersht’s work will become a large part of my current work. I am really glad that i watched this talk.