9-30 august 2008
Opening: Saturday 9 August 2008, 6 pm

> Symbiosis - a solo exhibition by Dylan Culhane

Super Karaoke Disco Party (Yokohama) 2007 Lightjet Print on Fuji Crystal archival paper 90 x 60 cm

In this unique collection of photographic illustrations, Dylan Culhane forges bold, surreal imagery from the graphic collisions of light, colour, form and texture that occur during the infinitesimal  photographic moment. The symbiotic relationship between disparate images within the same frame creates new visual possibilities concomitant with alternative meaning. In a process inspired by the Hegelian philosophy of thesis/antithesis/synthesis, the artist fuses multiple viewpoints of his subject matter to the point of abstraction, and then presents these nonfigurative compositions in a manner that evokes the representational. At the same time these photographs are personal intuitive responses to the places in which they were made, including Cape Town, Johannesburg, Los Angeles, Tokyo and Beijing.

Many of the images on display explore the human eye’s response to symmetry; both from an aesthetic and a psychological point-of-view. Aside from signaling beauty, symmetry in nature is generally restricted to human and animal faces and the eye is thus programmed to seek out visages wherever perfect alignment is detected. Building on the psychoanalytical theory pioneered by Hermann Rorschach and his famous ‘ink-blot tests’, many of the photographs in Symbiosis trigger a subconscious recognition of human and animal forms. In this sense they become portraits of the countless doppelgangers that populate our collective unconscious; the imagery revealed to the viewer is in effect a reflection of our own psychological paradigms.

Though often mistaken at first glance for digital art, painting or graphic design, all the photographs on display in Symbiosis are created with traditional in-camera film techniques, without relying on the process of digital manipulation. Culhane’s work is characterized by a lateral interpretation of photographic conventions, regarding the camera as an image-making apparatus as opposed to a forensic device.