Viviane Sassen is shortlisted for the Deutsche Boerse Photography Prize 2015 for her exhibition Umbra.
The exhibition at the Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam (8 March – 1 June 2014) displayed photography, drawings and light installations accompanied by specially commissioned poems from artist and poet, Maria Barnas.
Sassen’s distinctive and experimental approach to images foregrounds vivid colour alongside stark contrasts of light and shade in sculptural compositions where form and content verge on abstraction. In “Umbra”, shot in the Namibian desert, Viviane plays with the reflections and refractions of colored glass panes. The sublime interaction of form and color resembles the Russian Supremacists, with sky and sand being the canvas, while light is the paintbrush.
In this series, the role of suffused colors projected onto the sand is equivalent in meaning and value to that of shadows, which sometimes draw mysterious and deformed contours around a normal silhouette.
