Works °4 — ANDREW FOLAN

interview and intro by Joan Fowler

ISBN 978 0946641 161     32 pages (paperback)    20x15cm    24 illus

Andy Folan has an abiding interest in how the eye perceives an object and how the corresponding relationship between the object and the observer – a camera-like eye/mind relationship – develops. In this book, Folan explains the origins of his interest in the underworld and his shift from the use of photographic images to printmaking. He discusses certain key works – those inspired by buildings, those with Biblical and Classical references, as well as recurring emblematic themes and the development of his three-dimensional work. 

EXTRACTS

"The consistent feature of Andrew Folan’s images is his concern with how the eye perceives the object and the object’s relationship with the subject as observer, or more particularly, with Folan as artist. The analogy between the eye and the eye of the camera is never far from the surface of his images. The artist’s or the camera’s field of vision is the key to the images. This functions on a number of levels: he uses the eye/mind relationship like the camera obscura, the image of the outside world is transferred and assimilated into the mind; the frame of the camera (or the artist’s picture space), is arbitrary, it frames the object and cuts out the shifting relationships of the world to make a static, fixed image. These conflicting and contradictory concepts of the field of vision are his interest but in his images, things are not quite what they seem."

— from the intro by Joan Fowler

"I’ve always been interested in the mechanism of photography and the principles that go with it. Prior to these prints, I did serial photographs which dealt with the way the eye of the camera operates. I’m interested in analytical looking which is similar to how, for example, a medical textbook might show the make–up of the human body by peeling away the layers and showing sections. Essentially, however, I’m more concerned with analysis derived from the use of the camera...
          Photography in itself is too cold for me. I had more ideas than the photographic image allowed without cluttering it up. Okay, the serial photographs were a cleansing process where I had to concentrate on a single, conceptual progression of images, but I was very conscious of the lack of emotional content and I wanted to re–introduce it. When I did, in the prints, I thought I was being much more precise while containing a richness."

— Andy Folan