"
I don’t feel so concerned anymore that my work needs to be immediately comprehensible. I’m consciously allowing concepts to evolve and develop in a less linear fashion. I’m enjoying the possibilities presented by a more enigmatic or mysterious tone...where you only get glimpses of what may be a more encompassing psycho- drama..." - Simon Strong
In other words, you're not meant to 'get' Simon Strong's work. We're not expecting you to sit in front of your computer screen for twenty minutes, psychoanalysing the darkest corners of these images. Instead, take them for what they are: a little bit fucked up and a whole lot aesthetically saturated. In fact, if you do manage to pull some freaky-deaky voodoo meaning out of Strong's work, you should probably considering booking in for another session with your shrink: there's nothing normal about glowing cabbages.
His heavily layered and constructed photographs seem both familiar and surreal at the same time. Strong plays with the idea of normalcy: how far can you push the boundaries of the visual image before we begin to disregard it? Embrace the wackness. Naked bodies are rarely sexual, men are nonsurplussed when trapped inside glass boxes, and having a string of Christmas lights spew from someone's open mouth like an escaping fiberoptic tape worm seems perfectly ho-hum.
Check out his Flash-tacular website,
simonstrong.com
- Story by Georgia for Lifelounge