France
Shakes
2018
Argentic paper
17.8 x 24cm
Yky uses photography to symbolize urban resilience. His works are generally presented as diptychs, a series of two images (a stage 1 image and a stage 2 image) that combine to make one piece. The first photograph (stage 1) illustrats a hazard. This image is developed using a traditional chemical development technique employed in photographic darkrooms which fixes light and darks onto the photographic paper a permanent way. The second image (stage 2) is an image of that same hazard but produced using an iteration of the chemical development process that does not fix the lights and darks of the image in a permanent way causing them to forever change depending on the light in their environment. The stage 2 image is developed on silver photographic paper where some areas of paper are chemically treated with fixing or developer agents at given dilution and time, and some are not. As a result, when exposed to light the entire image continues to develop in a way that dependent on the brightness, the UV index, and the refraction angle of light on the paper. This unpredictable development due to a multi-parameter process mirrors the elements of urban change and resilience. In these works, light symbolizes the hazard.
Considering himself a “citizen artist” Yky came to photography as he was seeking a better way to communicate the risks, hazards, and needs of urban resilience. The entire basis of this work is that the images can never be stable. This recalls that the stability of an urban space, though resilient, can never be taken as granted.
Shakes in particular questions the challenge of implementing an Urban Resilience strategy after widespread destruction. Playing with architectural symbols, broken reflections, and linear designs that at once feel like an earthquake monitor as they do a heart monitor, Yky questions what it means to be fragile. The artist states:
Highlighting our urban fragility, the destroyed landscape of the first picture is surrounded by two meaningful iconic symbols, a Le Corbusier building and the Golden Gate Bridge, barely withstanding a quake. In the second picture, the landscape fades away. Only the broken glass path remains, suggesting perhaps that a better future where we can overcome our fears still remains.
Select Previous Exhibitions
*Yky is an emerging artist, this exhibition is his first international show.
Education
Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, FR
