Barbara Kasten

Barbara Kasten Studio Construct 2008

She has been featured in multiple collections including the Chicago Art Institute, as well an extensive list of exhibtions.  She was very interested in recording the way light would bend, and focused on what the naked eye could not see...

"The occurrence of light hitting a plane is distinctive from the recording of the same light thru the lens of a camera. A unique vision occurs through the optical prism that can be captured and ultimately printed, yet cannot be seen by the naked eye. As I directed light on various parts of transparent planes and studied it in the back of a view camera, multicolored abrasions activating the surface appeared. The scratches become a color field of drawing over a normally invisible sheet of plastic. The perception of a ‘thing’, a recordable reality of representation, is basic to the photographic process. In the series “Incidence”, the rendering of light becomes abstract interpretation of surface and form. However, I do not think of the photograph’s construction in terms of abstraction but as an event. Many abstract notions are conjured up as we view this unique recording of materiality. The synthesis of abstract form and our imagination presents a means of seeing the process of lighting. This phenomenon is the subject of my new work and exhibit ‘abstracting…light"

Barbara Kasten

She was very inspired by the bauhaus concept that encouraged experimenting with new things. She started out in theater lighting and staging. In the 80's she played with mirrors and colorful lighting which would sometimes cause for very psychadelic pictures. She kind of plays with confusion, because sometimes the objects are not in scale..

From Architectural Series