Seventeen untitled images lead us through Rik Pinkcombe’s altered world “Hidden in Plain Sight”. It is a world full of questions with no intention of giving answers; a world where our perceptions are deliberately undermined; and, although hauntingly familiar, a world we cannot place within the realm we know as reality. As the title of the exhibition suggests, here lies a mystery within the ordinary.
Pinkcombe is a master of manipulating perceptions, dictating and ultimately challenging the way we see our own world. In several of his pictures he uses a technique of leaving buildings and structures in crisp and clear focus, while blurring their surroundings. This unnatural contrast distorts out perceptions lending the images an artificial quality. Buildings appear as if models in miniature; toy towns with toy cars parked in front. We find ourselves almost unconsciously asking “is this real?” - A fundamental question with which Pinkcombe has intentionally burdened us.
His more recent images capture isolated structures surrounded in a sea of darkness. Taken out of context, their isolation creates a similar sense of artificiality. Lit up as if from a spot light, it is as if they have become pieces of scenery for a stage. It could easily be believed that the parking ticket machine without its car park had been found in a television studio. While miniature models and stage scenery make the unreal seem real, here Pinkcombe has made the real seem unreal.
Each picture subtly removes us further from a normal perspective so that we are in a position to face pictures of a starkly realistic nature in a new light. We find ourselves studying a bus stop, a fire escape or a dilapidated house, far more intently than had we passed them in the street. Pinkcombe has indeed manipulated the focus of his lens and also the focus of his audience, elevating the once mundane and dull to the centre of our attention, where we find ourselves asking further questions about the nature of these images.
However, we are denied any information behind them. Even images of snow give us no clue as to what we are looking at, adding to the distance between ourselves and reality. Each untitled, we find ourselves in an anonymous world. Further emphasised by the absence of any individuals, the loss of identity is striking, whilst being presented with overt images of the impact of human civilisation. But where are the actors on this stage and where are the puppets in this toy town? Of course it is us and we are asked do we want to perform?
The artificiality of the world we have created for ourselves is suggested through Pinkcombe’s work where the man-made is so often set against the might of nature with disturbing consequences. The construction of a tiny city skyline beneath the vast sky seems an almost humorously pointless endeavour let alone the banality of a ticket machine or the travesty of a pile of tyres beneath a tree. We are forced to question our role within this world aided by the ability to look at reality through a changed perception.
Pinkcomb’es vision becomes most apparent in his triptych depicting the border of Mexico and the USA at night. It is taken from a large distance away reflecting the removed perspective he has created throughout the entire exhibition. From here we see clearest the crater humanity has made on the earth and itself through the scar on the landscape of the border. A self imposed boundary. A man-made division. The mass of lights and buildings and roads is intensely claustrophobic creating a great sense of pressure; a world about to burst at the seams. These three images suggest international unease, racial tension and all the stresses of living in this toy town we have made for ourselves. The loss of identity is felt most strong in these pictures, just a mass of people living and working together. The individual becomes lost as we see the human race from a removed perspective.
Despite the strangeness and uneasiness surrounding these images the most important point is that they are depictions of the real world. They are an opportunity to see from the artist’s point of view and look through the eyes of Rik Pinkcombe. We are looking directly at our world yet the esoteric implications of the title should urge us to look at ourselves. In this artificial world, how real are you?
Adam Gooding 2008
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