H SPENCER YOUNG

NEW YORK CITY
   WORK  •  EXHIBITIONS  •  ABOUT  •  CV  •  NEWS  •  WRITING   •  PRESS  •  FILM  •  NFT  •  APPAREL  •   ︎  •  ︎  •  ︎  •  ︎

 
The New Sky, 2012

Collage
Archival pigment print, artist framing
48h x 72w in (121.92h x 182.88w cm)

Ed: 10 + 2AP

The New Sky, 2012 is part of an ongoing series which deconstructs elements of nature into technologically influenced states. The act of doubling, inverting and combining vernacular photographs of the New York City sky evokes the substantially changing elements of our natural world, which can result in solastalgia, defined as a “form of emotional or existential distress caused by environmental change.” The New Sky employs destructive image compositing, compression and chance to generate a set of interference ‘clouds’ which appear to seamlessly emerge from, and bridge, the original images of the sky.

This work was created during a period of reflection on the changing environment based on certain perceptions leading to concern about the increasing visual evidence of these changes, particularly in the sky. It was later revaled that 2012, the year this work was created, would go on to have the hottest winter on record, with an average temperature of 43.1 degrees.

Further bringing the work into permanent “in between” state, the digital image is transferred to 8x10 film, and the print is exposed, by hand, from this transparency. No two prints are identical.