Shadow art

I was wondering what to do for coursework over the december holidays and I decided to try something different. So I typed in junk art in the google image search box. and this is what I found:

Upon first look, one would see nothing but a pile of junk, as if one had paid for a ticket to a rubbish dump. But when light is projected against them, one would be amazed at the shadow image which is entirely different to that seen when looking directly at the deliberately disguised pile.

This is one of the notable pieces made from piles of rubbish, deliberately positioned to form shadow images of recognisable forms. British-born and -based artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster have skilfully skirt the boundaries between beauty and the shadowier aspects of humanity, playing with our perceptions as well as our notions of taste. They have indeed given junk a new lease of life.

Next, I googled 'shadow art' and tada:

Kumi Yamashita is Japanese artist who is creating amazing artworks based on shadow rather than light. He has an amazing sense for shapes, thus being able to create everyday objects and recognisable subject matter from the shadows of letters and numbers. Most of his installations are made of some specially positioned objects and the most important part of his artworks is the light source which, when is confronted to those objects from a proper angle, creates shadow images on the wall. Essentially, the Yamashita is using shadows as an artwork, a fascinating and creative idea.

In this case, wires are twisted to a 'controlled mess' to form words. Entering the artistic space of Fred Eerdekens forces the viewer to ponder over words which what one had thought of as stable meanings are continually twisted and turned. In this sense, this piece is interactive as the viewers would have 'twist and turn' and trying to make sense of the objects.

Shadows are indeed a fascinating and different medium to create art. What appears at the surface may not be what it seems. This applies to shadow art, where the objects are a scattered mess while the shadows are neat and recognisable. Similarly, we may not really understand our closed ones. I was inspired by this and have decided to investigate in this area as an option for my coursework:)