On show at The Photographers' Gallery from 4 December 2014 - 28 January 2015, Sun/Screen is a new project by award-winning New York based artist Penelope Umbrico. It continues her exploration into the production and consumption of photographs online, particularly focusing on the persistence of sunset imagery within popular photography. For this project, Umbrico used an iPhone to re-photograph images of the sun she cropped from thousands of sunset images shared on the web.  The process of capturing images directly from the computer screen creates a moiré pattern, which is the consequence of pixel grids, meshes or dot patterns being superimposed. Umbrico further amplifies this effect by editing the images into a single slideshow, with each shot slowly dissolving into the next. This creates a secondary moiré effect that draws attention to the materiality of the screen and further distances us from the natural sunlight source of the original images. Umbrico intends the work to operate as a dialogue between analogue and digital, natural and simulated light and the material and immaterial. The Photographers' Gallery is located at 16 - 18 Ramillies St, London W1F 7LW.

The Photographers' Gallery Press Release

Penelope Umbrico: Sun/Screen

4 December 2014 - 28 January 2015

The Media Wall presents Sun/Screen, a new work by award-winning New York based artist Penelope Umbrico. It continues her exploration into the production and consumption of photographs online, particularly focusing on the persistence of sunset imagery within popular photography. By interrogating the different ways that images function in the digital realm, she raises important questions about the value, meaning and agency of the photographic medium today.
 
For Sun/Screen, Umbrico used an iPhone to re-photograph images of the sun she cropped from thousands of sunset images shared on the web.  The process of capturing images directly from the computer screen creates a moiré pattern - an optical illusion, which is the consequence of pixel grids, meshes or dot patterns being superimposed. Umbrico further amplifies this effect by editing the images into a single slideshow, with each shot slowly dissolving into the next. This creates a secondary moire effect that draws attention to the materiality of the screen and further distances us from the natural sunlight source of the original images. Umbrico intends the work to operate as a dialogue between analogue and digital, natural and simulated light and the material and immaterial.
 
Penelope Umbrico writes: I find it intriguing that the sun, our source of light and warmth, symbol of optimism, enlightenment, spirituality, eternity; the measure of all things unreachable and ephemeral is so universally photographed and circulated on the internet.  Within this cool, most virtual of spaces - equally infinite but within a closed electrical circuit - we are given a virtual window onto a natural world made un-natural.
 
Presented alongside Sun/Screen is Never-ending Sunset (Second Life), 2011 in which Umbrico continues her meditation on simulated light. The piece features an endless sunset setting over an artificial sea derived from the virtual world Second Life. The scripted Second Life environment can be set to defy the laws of time and nature, delivering a fantasy of what a perfect sunset might be.

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