Cat Poljski - Reflecting Spaces

Wednesday 11 - Sunday 29 September 2024

Click here for artwork by Cat Poljski

The Crystal Palace, Madrid is adorned with expansive glass panels on an iron structure that is clover shaped and crowned by a dome. The ingenious use of cast iron columns and generous glass surfaces allows for a spacious and grand interior, which compliments the description as a glass cathedral. It mirrors a sense of duplicate spaces, transparent, inside out. 

With its reflective surfaces and the refractions of light from the sun, Palacio de Cristal inspired this body of work. Each day that I spent on location resulted in differed shards of light and shapes that sparked an imagined new space for me; the inside was outside and vice versa. Transparent layers and multiple reflections created an optical illusion: surrounded by glass and encased in glass, the surrounding areas of space formed its own selection of fabricated façades.

 

I can never get enough of this Crystal Palace. Each time I walk to it or pass it I am enthralled by it and drawn to it like a magnetic force. I take more photos, this time with more detail in the layers that form this incredible structure. The light bounces like a dance on the surface of each of the panels which turns me inside out.

The light that shines onto the palace is luminous; the photos today will be different to yesterday and the day before, and it is difficult to capture the layers through a lens, although my eye becomes the lens in this situation. Each blink of the eye recreates a new type of composition. I have so many ideas racing around in my head and am itching to get onto them. Tomorrow I shall declare a studio day and start my planning; of course, I will have to go out for walks and food.  

Excerpt from my travel diary, April 2024