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| Reuben Wu, LN0377 installed at photo-eye Gallery for Aeroglyphs & Other Nocturnes |
I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Wu about LN 0377, one of the first images in which he used drones and light in this unique way:
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| Reuben Wu, LN 0377 (Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in future III), Archival Pigment Print, 38 x 50 inches, Edition of 3, $5,000 (Unframed) |
“That image [LN0377] was from the first attempt at doing an idea which I’d had in my mind for a couple of years prior. Back when I was thinking of what this project could be, I wanted to light all of these vast landscapes under the light of the drones. I was pretty excited about the maneuvers that the drone could do…one was called “the orbit” where you could lock the position and path of the drone (having it fly in a circle automatically) but control the speed and radius at which it flies. I thought, if I put a light on that I could move the light around the landscape in this magical, impossible way. I hadn’t tested this technique until that point.
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| Reuben Wu photographing on location while making work for Lux Noctis. |
One of the things I love about this project is the fact that there is tension between the natural textures and surfaces of the terrain and the clean geometry of the light path. I see it as kind of like my version of the land art movement. Where the land artists do their thing by touching the landscape, altering it in some way, building, changing something, I wanted to do something light-based which didn’t touch the landscape or interfere with it in a permanent way. Obviously, it’s a noisy, annoying drone while it’s flying, but it’s not painting or carving things or leaving any lasting effect. And for me, it’s more about the light that’s cast onto the rocks than the path of light itself. The path shows how I’m intervening into the landscape, but the light that’s shown down onto the land really makes the image for me. It makes it real… that kind of lighting is impossible to create in Photoshop, it’s a real thing that’s happening.
I also see this project as speaking to something bigger than humanity. Humanity is such a tiny blip on the time-span of the planet. It speaks to something that is more based in the language of geology and the elements, like the way that a rainbow is elements of light playing with precipitation, and this very pure visual effect occurs. The light paths only exist in the photograph. You don’t see the shapes in person because your eye only sees a single point of light moving. These shapes have to be recorded with a camera to be seen, which points to the photograph and the camera being able to show what you can’t see with your eye. There is something there for me, about being able to use the camera in this way. You can only see what is in front of you one moment at a time with your eye, but using a camera in this way, you can see what’s happening over the course of a few seconds. This is expanding on the element of time and that capacity of the camera being able to show beyond what the eye can see." — Reuben Wu
Wu's solo exhibition at photo-eye Gallery, Aeroglyphs & Other Nocturnes, runs through November 16, 2019.
All prices listed were current at the time this post was published.
For more information, and to purchase artworks, please contact photo-eye Gallery Staff at:
For more information, and to purchase artworks, please contact photo-eye Gallery Staff at:
(505) 988-5152 x 202 or gallery@photoeye.com
(Shipping Late October)
Aeroglyphs & Other Nocturnes: Photographs by Reuben Wu
Kris Graves Projects, Queens, New York, United States, 2019. In English. 30 pp., 16 color plates, 8½x9"
