The lamp 2015

This photograph of a lamp against a sky was taken by Alfred Freddy Krupa. Look how this image hovers between the solid and the ephemeral. The stark contrast between the black lamp and the white clouds really catches my eye. What was Krupa thinking when he snapped this shot? Was he drawn to the simple geometry of the lamp against the vast, atmospheric sky? There’s something about the texture of the clouds, thick and churning, that feels really physical, like impasto in a painting. The single line of the wire is like a pencil line, and the solid lamp is a dark mass of paint. It reminds me a little of Gerhard Richter’s cloudscapes, in the way it captures the sublime in the everyday. Artists are always riffing off each other, consciously or not, in this never-ending conversation across time. This image embraces that ambiguity, allowing for so many different ways of seeing and experiencing the world.