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The Unknowable Nature of Reality


These installations by artist Chris Engman are so surreal! At first the scenes seem perfectly normal, but after looking more closely it's easy to tell that something is amiss. The artist is keen on playing with human perception and forcing his viewers to question what they see. The installation of his photographs into the scenes are a deliberate and elaborate process that takes days, and sometimes a crew, to set up.

Engman is extremely interested in human existence and the idea that one day each of us will vanish from the earth. In his artist statement, he said, “My work takes the human condition as its central theme and examines the most fundamental of issues: the inexplicable fact of our existence, the ungraspable experience of time, and the illusive and unknowable nature of reality.” By photographing a place and then turning that photograph into a physical object and placing it back into the original scene, Engman investigates how we as people experience the passage of time. Check out his group show at Luis De Jesus in Los Angeles until April 7, 2012 and ponder these seriously intense ideas!








Chris Engman's website
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles
via [Illusion]

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