Looking into the Thames is never that much fun, you may wave hello to a mutated catfish or an empty bottle but you rarely peer in and wonder at the magic of nature. In Jessica Backhaus’ series, though, we are invited to gaze into the famous waters of Venice and marvel at the reflections of the timeless surrounding buildings. The way that the candy colours of the rigid buildings are distorted and mashed together like marble cake by the ripples of the waters are accentuated when seen in a series of images, almost transformed into paintings rather than photographs.
Known in the art world for her abstract, vivid photographs of household objects and familiar dwelling spaces, this series steps away from the familiar and into the dreamlike nature of reflections in water. Alexa Becker writes of Jessica’s series and change of artistic direction: “Distortion and transformation now enter into her work for the first time, and in some cases an utter refusal to imbue the images with any particular statement. Puzzled, the viewer realises that these strikingly colored surfaces might possibly exist on natural water.”