Ossian Eckerman
Uncanny Hills, 2014
The mask is a object loaded with meaning, Like the apparent in identities and in its importance as a ritual artifact. In my work i want to explore and bend what can seam threat full about masks as well as the distorted. I aim to embrace the dissolved and insecure. Robot engineer Masahiro Mori discovered in his attempts to mimic human beings, that there was a gap of recognition in the transition from human to something else. He called this valley of uncertainty that emerged in the graphs "Uncanny Valley". I believe that the distorted and uncertain doesn’t necessarily need to be something unpleasant. Instead I rather see it as an opportunity. To maintain a relationship between the photographic collages and how our own eyes function, I have worked with analog techniques like mirrors and optics. But it isn’t until the images emerges into masks that they find there coherent presence. Just like the insecurity nests inside us, the distorted may be found around us. All these masks represent images of people close to me. After all even the most familiar faces may take other forms when we are intimately close. In these moments, the uncanny seem more like a hill than a valley.
ossianeckerman@icloud.com
