POPEL COUMOU

Posted by Fabio 18 November 2010

Popel Coumou looks for the romanticism in geometry and human absence. The way the outline of a dusty window is projected on a bleak floor shows the almost tangible loneliness in her photographs. Nevertheless the source of these works is a lot less evident than first suspected. These images are collages constructed out of two dimensional fragments of architecture and nature which are then lit and photographed. In this way her two dimensional collage photography leads to the illusion of a three dimensional space. This in turn enables her to create unreal spaces in which time evaporates into a desolate vacuum.

This doesn’t mean her works are always depressing. There exists a certain beauty in the gritty coldness and sharp distinction of forms visible in these works. A beauty that could be compared to the lone figures we see in the paintings by Caspar David Friedrich. Popel implicitly shows the presence of man in her works and by doing so invokes the classical search for identity in the arts. This aspect of her work is strengthened by her technique in which she prefers the small imperfections of analog photography in favor of the impersonal perfection of the digital image. By doing so her works are always balancing between a sence of space that is both silenced and human and the flattened plane of the collage.

www.popelcoumou.nl