This image was produced by deeply zooming in on a satellite image of some random spot of Antarctica’s icecap were the deep blue of the ocean touches upon the white of the surrounding ice-scape ice landscape. Originally it was blown up and printed on a thick vinyl sheet so as to function as the Floor piece of the site-specific installation ICESONGS presented at La Verrière, the gallery space of the Fondation d’Enterprise Hermès in Brussels, Belgium (2010).
The dark blue square functioned as a shallow pool of water, at the centre of the space as it was filled with water to its rim. The water pools cavity lied exactly under the glass roof and the waters’ level coincided exactly with the surrounding floors’ level. The entire floor depicted this abstract image; a deep blue square progressing into a bright icy white as it unfolded towards the edges of the space. The dark blue liquid plane mirrored the light from above and created the sensation of a resplendent, yet disconcerting body of water; the remains of an iceberg melted.
The image remained powerful in my mind for some time after the installation was over, functioning like an imagined landscape, at once familiar and alien. In 2013 I decided to re-produce this image and to re-imagine it as an autonomous artwork that could be hanged on a wall. I renamed it Ice2. While experimenting with the image I also created a second version of it were by reversing the image and creating its negative it functions as a positive/negative pair.
*For more info on the original installation click here
