Using the camera to transmute reality, Fabiola Menchelli combines diverse perspectives in a single plane, generating a dimension that exists only within the camera. The images from this body of work are constructed inside the camera exposing the light-sensitive surface multiple times altering the object, shapes, and colors, thus generating different planes of light combined in the latent image.

The work reveals the subjectivity of the lens by conceiving the camera as a perceptual apparatus that points inside to create the image. Seeking to question the ontological nature of the photographic medium to elevate the space of representation beyond the paradigms of perception.

Fabiola Menchelli, Parallax, 2016, Archival pigment print on fiber paper, 30″ x 40” / 70 x 100 cm[/caption]

Under the Blue Sun originated during Fabiola Menchelli’s 2015 residency at Casa Wabi, a Tadao Ando-designed residential compound for artists situated near Puerto Escondido, along the Oaxacan coast of Mexico. An observatory on the premises, intended by Ando as a site for deep contemplation, became Menchelli’s source of inspiration for a new body of work about the poetics of observation.

Over the course of 28 days, Menchelli photographed the shifting light that slipped into the observatory’s imposing, concrete structure. Capturing the rhythmic, cyclical shifts of the sun across multiple exposures, she began to transpose the physical dimensionality of the architecture into immeasurable space. The resulting images were printed with a 170-year-old photographic process called cyanotype, reproducing the rough, uneven curves of the observatory walls with a technique that’s notoriously difficult to control. Quite literally drawing with light, these new works were informed by the same wabi-sabi philosophy that inspired the building itself, one that embraces the imperfect and transient elements found in nature.

Menchelli presents ‘outside’ and ‘inside’ not only as spatial elements but also as temporal dimensions. By unifying multiple exposures, she blurs the boundaries between the observatory’s solid edge and the vast, impenetrable sky. The overlapping layers of blue tonalities metaphorically fold in upon one another, adding a depth and richness that both abstracts the spaces depicted and the time in, during, and over which they were captured. By removing the clear visual referents via which one might more easily read or understand the image, Menchelli manipulates our own perceptive powers in order to complete the work.

In 1838, John Herschel, the inventor of the cyanotype, captured one of his earliest images through a circular window: that of a telescope belonging to his father, the renowned astronomer William Herschel. Somehow the act of looking beyond — of collapsing space and distance through the manipulation of our organs of perception and our sensory experience — also too creates a circular path linking Herschel, Ando, and Menchelli. Each one looks beyond and then ultimately back, to reflect on the nature of the very thing they seek to capture. Through science, architecture, and photography their works speak not only to light and the spaces that it illuminates but to the subtle revolutions we experience as the result of profound contemplation.

Under the Blue Sun is presented as two cycles of seven images and in this way, Menchelli too comes full circle. Each image, through its imperfect curves and asymmetrical forms, reveals an experience captured in order to eventually be continued by others. Their multiplicity and the ever so subtle variations across repetitions amplifies each image’s own subjectivity, echoing the simple realization that a finished product is always still a
work in progress.

— Asha Bukojemsky

Ellipse is a series of abstract photographs created in May 2015, taken inside a concrete observatory, and formed by multiple exposures within the camera.

The series embodies a composition of light, shapes, shadows, lines, and forces. The expression, not only through a single picture but also as a whole, is the result of various elements; the materials, the light, the shadow, the edge of the concrete, the air, the ocean, and the horizon all work as an influence on the creative process.

The purpose is to create from one image to another, a spiral in motion. Shapes, circles, ellipses, and movements are organic and energetic; forces in contact with each other. Showing intangible ideas can be felt and connected through what awakens in each person. Geometry, as space and a source of inspiration, generates images open to interpretation for the observer. However, it is inevitable to perceive the strength they have when they combine and create a greater space.

The series seeks to awaken a reflection on the bond between human beings; and how a stronger space is constructed in community, the same way an image meets another sibling image, and they connect.

Blueprints was commissioned for the exhibition “Appearances Can Be Deceiving: Photographic Explorations through Mexican Photography”, curated by Irving Dominguez with the support of Museo Universitario del Chopo and Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes.

This project sought to invert the relationship between photography and architecture and return the museum’s building to its original space as a blueprint. Over a month, I climbed the towers at the Chopo Museum in Mexico City, registering the shadow of the structure onto cyanotypes. The work intended to reconnect architecture and photography, returning the building to its conceptual state through a poetic gesture that speaks about space in relation to time.

Using the patterns formed by the holes in the concrete wall, a set of rules is created to draw a series of geometric structures onto the wall. Wall Drawings is a game obliged by a set of visual rules using a digital projector to draw on concrete wall.

Pieces for the XII Bienal FEMSA.

Concrete Space suggests the limits and tensions between thought and matter. The abstract spaces are constructed inside the camera, by making multiple exposures on the same picture plane, thus transforming the space into a mental space, that only the camera can perceive. The work seeks to speak about a phenomenology of construction through a series of instant black-and-white films that transform the physical space, a space made of concrete, into an abstract plane generated by light. The piece finally returns to its physicality by pushing off the wall and remembering its concrete reality.

Project supported by Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes.

Project supported by Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes.

“One does not see with the eyes, one sees with the brain”
Oliver Sacks

I use the camera as if it was my brain constructing meaning from darkness to light. The process for this work was to create images of imaginary spaces, spaces that only the camera could see, made out of pieces of pictures by doing multiple exposures unto one frame. Drawing from black to white, calculating layers of shade and balancing foreground and background, in a memory game that does not finish until the image is complete.

This project is inspired and dedicated to Oliver Sacks.

Unlike painting, photography is based on additive color theory, in which the primary colors are red, green, and blue, and yellow is simply the result of red and green light. The images are constructed from layers of paper exposed multiple times to generate different colors and shapes. These photographs were taken with one of the few Polaroid 20 x 24″ cameras that exist in the world. Although the result is a two-dimensional photographic image, the edge of the piece makes evident the developing process. In this way, the work produces a tension between the intangible and the concrete to reveal the raw material that constitutes the photographic process, creating the illusion of an architectural space.

In a digital age where the boundaries between the virtual and the physical blend and generate new experiences, I am interested in using the language of abstraction to make images that seem to present a tangible visible reality but which are never quite there, except in the eye of the camera and the mind of the maker. In the studio, I construct installations using simple materials and project light onto them. I seek to transform the physical with light and shadow. The process of integrating these elements into a picture allows me to play with the materiality of thought. I aim to challenge our beliefs about perception and make thought visible by drawing attention to the light as it embraces the surface of paper and animates space. The interaction between light and shadow transforms these ephemeral installations into complex visual spaces that evoke a world that is both physically tangible and as elusive as light, both virtual and real.