{"id":6978,"date":"2015-10-16T17:22:22","date_gmt":"2015-10-16T09:22:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/weiling-gallery.com\/gallery\/?post_type=portfolio&p=6978"},"modified":"2015-10-16T17:22:22","modified_gmt":"2015-10-16T09:22:22","slug":"photo-jelly-art-by-andrew-sia","status":"publish","type":"portfolio","link":"https:\/\/dev08.mm-sb.com\/web04\/portfolio-item\/photo-jelly-art-by-andrew-sia\/","title":{"rendered":"Photo Jelly Art by Andrew Sia"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The Star, 12 April 2009
\nPhoto Jelly Art
\nby Andrew Sia<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

A Czech artist stretches photography to its limits by manipulating the actual material itself.
\nPICTURE a person clawing his own face, which is depicted as fragments of a torn photograph.
\nIs this the future of photography?<\/p>\n

\"Czech<\/a>

Czech artist Michal Macku turns photo gelatins into striking, even surreal, works encased in glass.<\/p><\/div>\n

Well, not quite. This represents how far the 19th-century technology of black and white photography \u2013 the stuff of rancid chemicals in square metal pans, dark rooms and good old scissors \u2013 can go in the hands of 21st-century Czech artist Michal Macku.
\nTake his Untitled \u2013 Carbon Print No. 16, which shows several ethereal figures encased in multiple layers of glass, locked in a visual poem of eternal human yearning.
\nOr the stratification and overlay of men \u2013 again within manifold layers of glass \u2013 creating a ghostly effect reminiscent of a Nazi concentration camp in Untitled \u2013 Glass Gellage No. II.
\nThe best part of all these images is that they are not the result of some sleight of computer chips; rather, they\u2019ve been painstakingly handcrafted from fragile sheets of photo gelatin.
\nAs Macku, 47, explained during the launch of his exhibition at Wei-Ling Gallery in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday, he uses two processes to create his works. One is called gellage.
\nIn traditional photography, a bright light shines through a \u201cnegative\u201d film and creates a \u201cpositive\u201d image on photo paper. Macku has replaced the paper so that the image is created on a large piece of \u201cpositive\u201d film instead, made of countless silver particles in gelatin (thus it\u2019s called silver gelatin).<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/a>

Two photo gelatins (of the same person!) fight one another in Untitled \u2013 Gellage No. 69. Clearly, humans have many battles with their own demons.<\/p><\/div>\n

He then cuts out the portions he wants from the positive film and bathes them in alcohol, then water, to obtain pliable pieces of translucent silver gelatin images \u2013 which he can further twist, turn or stretch before encasing them inside glass.
\nIt all seems a bit like a school art workshop.
\n\u201cIn theory it sounds easy. But it has taken me years to perfect the craft,\u201d said Macku, whose huge and powerful hands seem better-suited to grappling with tough clay rather than delicate photo gelatins.
\nYet he has produced sublime, almost surreal, works with these techniques.
\nHis Untitled \u2013 Glass Gellage No XVII shows how the struggle to remain still and meditate can seem like a kind of prison. The crucifix image (made up of many smaller crucified men) in his Untitled \u2013 Glass Gellage No. 5 is like an exhortation to follow the sacrificial example of a leader.
\nIn Untitled \u2013 Gellage No. 69, two shadowy photos (of the same person, Macku pointed out) on a flat print fight one another, clearly reflecting mankind\u2019s battles with its own demons.
\n\u201cWe do many things that are not good for us, just because of social expectations … and so we are full of tensions,\u201d he commented.
\nIn fact, it is the strikingly transcendent quality of his art that led gallery owner Lim Wei-Ling to make a special effort to bring Macku to Malaysia for his first show in Asia.
\n\u201cThere were more than 300 galleries showing works at the Milan Art Fair in spring last year,\u201d recalled Lim. \u201cI was walking for hours and feeling quite jaded from seeing the same kind of images. Suddenly, in a corner booth, I spotted his glass works and they were like a breath of fresh air.\u201d
\nMacku has tertiary qualifications in both plastics technology and artistic photography. But over and above that is his nod to Edison\u2019s adage that \u201cinspiration is 99% perspiration\u201d.
\n\u201cI enjoy it when I cannot do something, especially when it comes to the technical problems of plastics and chemistry. For me, it\u2019s like a puzzle or game, so I keep at it again and again until I get it right,\u201d he said in halting, almost diffident, English.
\nHis love for chemical puzzles has led him to work with another technique called carbon printing, where the image is formed not by silver particles (like normal film) but by chemically-treated carbon particles in gelatin.
\n\u201cThis is a 19th century type of photography that became extinct 80 years ago. It\u2019s an almost forgotten process,\u201d Macku explained. \u201cBut in the 1930s, it was used by the famous Czech photographer Frantisek Drtikol. I can feel his presence in old Czech photos and am inspired by him.\u201d
\nDuring a talk at the opening of his exhibition, he selflessly shared the details of this painstaking process \u2013 which includes pouring the gelatin into hand-made glass pans, manually brushing the gelatin with a chromium salt, repeated soaking\/dissolving\/drying and long exposure to ultra-violet light.
\nCan computers create the kind of images he makes?
\n\u201cI don\u2019t think so. Anyway, computer images are too perfect,\u201d he replied. \u201cFor me, every step (of technique) has a different energy, and is part of the creative process. It\u2019s like putting a puzzle together.\u201d
\nDressed in an Indian kurtha and a bead necklace, Macku, who also practises yoga and meditation, revealed that his spiritual background inspires him for work.
\n\u201cIn substance, spirituality is all about coming from the heart, from an inner truthfulness,\u201d he shared.
\n\u201cMy work places \u2018body pictures\u2019 in new situations, new contexts, new realities … I am interested in questions of moral and inner freedom. I do what I feel, only then do I begin to meditate on the result. I am often surprised by the new connections I find.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Michal Macku \u2013 Glass (and) Gellages\u2019, showing till April 30 at Wei-Ling Gallery (No. 8, Jalan Scott, KL), is supported by the Embassy of the Czech Republic. For more information, call 03-2260 1106 \/ 012-302 5302 or go to weiling-gallery.com.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","tags":[],"portfolio_entries":[5],"class_list":["post-6978","portfolio","type-portfolio","status-publish","hentry","portfolio_entries-news-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev08.mm-sb.com\/web04\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio\/6978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev08.mm-sb.com\/web04\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev08.mm-sb.com\/web04\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/portfolio"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev08.mm-sb.com\/web04\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev08.mm-sb.com\/web04\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio\/6978\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev08.mm-sb.com\/web04\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev08.mm-sb.com\/web04\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6978"},{"taxonomy":"portfolio_entries","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev08.mm-sb.com\/web04\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio_entries?post=6978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}