Graham Boyd
Sculpture
My work serves to mediate between individuals and materials with the intention to destabilize and reconfigure what we simultaneously interact with and perceive. My practice is concerned with the reciprocity of visual and phenomenological experience and focuses on natural optical phenomena, such as the way light refracts and reflects off, and through, surfaces and materials and aims to create experiences where the causality or origins of optical phenomena are put to question. By presenting material properties within optical experiences in which a viewer’s perception is an integral part, the viewer is given the tools to understand that perception is not merely passively receptive (looking), but in fact continually active; giving form and shape to our phenomenological world (seeing). We habitually remain unconscious to these organizing principles, assuming the independent existence of an objective world. Within my practice I initially seek to catch seeing in the act of figuration and reveal seeing as representational, rather than innocently presentational.
Using a multitude of materials and their refractive, reflective, and physical properties, I present transient moments between the viewer, the work I create, and the space a viewer resides within. I bring attention to moments and physical properties that may go unnoticed or unobserved, inclining a viewer to inquire about their place in the phenomena they experience and just how integral they are to what it is they call Experience and Perception. In focusing on the often-ignored intricacies of perception, I hope to raise awareness of the mutability of perception and vision in order to destabilize our assumed concrete assumption of the world
Untitled (Visualizer)
Within my 2021 work Untitled (Visualizer) I use light and water to display a phenomenon only present due to the certain configuration of materials and their properties. An LED spotlight reflects off a pool of black water, appearing static to the naked eye, sitting on the floor which, in turn, is reflected onto the wall. The projection of reflected light is continuously moving and changing shape and direction of movement, all of these visual changes are a result of the movement of water particles within the pool, affected by the resonant vibrations of the building and the movements of people within it.
Framed Phenomenon
In my 2021 work Framed Phenomenon I have captured the way light refracts off rippling water. A large black pool of water sits upon the floor in front of 2 fluorescent tube lights fixed to the wall. These 2 lines of light appear as white vertical lines in the reflection of the black water, while droplets of water fall from 4 points above, disturbing the pool’s surface at uncontrolled instances. Each time a droplet hits the surface it creates ripples throughout the pool, interacting with the other ripples, creating ephemeral and randomized patterns of black and white, similar to 2D graphic imagery and akin to moonlight on a lake or traffic lights in a puddle.
