Popel Coumou

Popel Coumou
Popel Coumou

Photographs: Popel Coumou

Text: Emiel van der Pol

Publisher: Van Zoetendaal

136 pages

Year: 2012

Price: 60 €

Comments: Softcover, 245 x 185 mm. First edition, 2012. Text in English. In great condition. Now out of print.

Sunshine through a dusty window can lit a room in a way that seems to accentuate it’s emptiness. The soft glow and distinct shadows create a geometric relationship between the borders of the space, its colours and the world outside. When viewed as a whole the scene takes on the qualities of a graphic abstraction of visible reality. A two dimensional slice of subjective vision that represents the palpable absence of human activity.

Popel Coumou’s art is inspired by this naturally occurring play of lines. She tries to simulate these lifeless but highly evocative areas by shaping her own slices of constructed space. She uses a great variety of techniques (paint, clay, fabric, plastics) to construct the illusion of a place. She then carefully lights this architectural collage to add the suggestion of a third dimension to the photographs she takes of these scenes. By accentuating the effects of light outside and shadows inside these spaces, she furthers both the sense of a flattened representation and the illusion of depth. The end result is an image that seems to hold the mid ground between painterly abstraction and geometric photography.