While taking photographs of the many building sites in Toronto, I have been continually attracted by the rudimentary, often abstract forms found within their chaotic clutter.
One of these building sites that has particularly captivated me is the development on the corner of Richmond Street West and Peter Street, where several historic buildings are being connected by a contemporary steel and glass structure. Fascinated by the sheer monumentality of the space, I first shot a few photographs of the three colossal steel supports that reminded me of some primeval majestic forms. I have been returning to the site to shoot again and again, as the space around the huge supports was filling up with scaffolding, evocative of M.C. Escher’s labyrinthine art. Finally, nearly finished, the supports, now white and free of clutter, tower over the space and impart majestic and at the same time mystical atmosphere.
In this work I am exploring spatial relationships in terms of scale, mass and emptiness. While processing some of the images, I have used negative inversion with the aim to remove a layer of reality and to focus even more on the plasticity of shapes. My vision for this series of work is to evoke the space as a both physical and spiritual experience. Some of the titles were inspired by the book by Michio Kaku Hyperspace.