Oliver Wasow is originally from Wisconsin, but now is settled with his wife in New York. They have two children by the names of Henry and Iris. He mostly works with digital art and photography. Oliver utilizes photoshop in order to merge photographs together that are not normally correlated, but he does it in a way that looks realistic. As he was making himself famous, he became a successful exhibition curator that led him to have several personal exhibitions. His work is currently displayed in New York City by the Kathleen Cullen Gallery. Oliver now teaches aspiring students in many places including; The Bard College Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, The School of Visual Arts Graduate Program in Photography and Related Media, and SVA's Undergraduate Photography Program.
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| Untitled #339 |
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| Orchid Show |
Oliver Wasow's artwork shows tensions between culture and nature by intermixing reality with fiction. I see his artwork as almost believable because he chose familiar places and accentuates them by combining light and nature. The way he tied nature into his photographs illustrates the immense psychological and physical impact nature has on humans. Nature is used as an escape from reality to internally calm you. Also he experiments with fiction by introducing the opposite effect of what we are doing to the environment now. In the photographs nature is invading, but in reality we are invading nature. Using this reverse reality exposes that we need nature. He illustrates in the photograph Office what happens when nature is gone. Eerie, cold, and lonesome vibes are given off. Oliver also uses specific lighting in each photograph. Light always shines on the nature present as when nature is absent it becomes hazy and depressing.
What drew me in to his artwork was the way he correlated nature and natural light into his photographs. I like his philosophy behind his art. He said in an excerpt from Jonathan Lipkin's book that "I try to collapse all these things into each other, creating pictures of places that are neither utopian nor dystopian but are, hopefully, beautiful, mysterious, compelling, and a little bit frightening. Much like life itself." He does an excellent job grasping his intentions and using photoshop well. The photographs look like he snapped the picture instead of integrating them together into one.
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Kayla,
ReplyDeleteOliver Wasow creates some very interesting art. I as well, love combining the two elements of photography and digital media together. I find the first photograph you included very intriguing. In high school, I learned to create this effect by taking 3 photos of the same object or space with 3 different shutter speeds, so the lighting would be different. Using photoshop you would combine each photo to create one photo that looks almost like the scene itself. His art is very realistic and interesting.
-Claire