Sohn Fine Art is pleased to present Capturing the Invisible, an exhibition of lenticular photography by British artist, Jeff Robb. The exhibition is on view October 15, 2021 – January, 2022 at Sohn Fine Art (69 Church Street, Lenox, MA). On Sunday, November 14th, Sohn Fine Art will feature a hybrid virtual and in-person conversation with the artist. Robb will tune in from England. The zoom link to this event will be posted on the exhibition page on Sohn Fine Art’s website. Please RSVP if you will attend virtually or in-person at the gallery.

Since graduating with distinction from the Royal College of Art in 1992, with a Masters Degree in Fine Art Holography, Jeff Robb has continually made art, ceaselessly experimenting with three-dimensional imaging. Shortly after graduating, he was invited to submit a landscape work to the Victoria & Albert Museum’s permanent collection, the first-ever hologram artwork to be accessioned by any London Museum. Robb’s works are now featured in museums and private collections around the world.

Robb is currently best known for his lenticular photographic work focusing on the female nude and abstract forms in space, which he makes in series. Robb is regularly testing possibilities with the lenticular medium and creating new immersive experiences using three-dimensional imaging and cutting-edge technology. Robb developed his own lenticular photography techniques and patented them. This kind of experimental lenticular installation work is completely unchartered territory for artists.

Lenticular photographs are produced using conventional printing techniques combined with a lens, presenting the viewer with a stereoscopic pair of images to give the illusion of a three-dimensional image. In neither holograms nor lenticular photography are there any layers of material giving rise to the three-dimensional effect, as is commonly thought. In order to capture three-dimensional information, a number of views of the subject are taken from right to left. For a static subject, 50 frames are typically captured by a single moving camera on a linear rail system, specially designed and built by Robb for the purpose. The captured frames are processed using software designed for the film industry to achieve the highest quality renderings. These frames are output to a laser-based writing system that encodes the image onto a photographic substrate. The image is then combined with an optical lens structure to form the final lenticular photographic work, which is finished using a bespoke laser ablation technique.

This exhibition highlights a collection of unforgettable images that trace the development of his figurative work and abstract forms in space. Robb’s works are portals that transport the viewer into other worlds, worlds which appear to have their own dimension and physical properties. The works show us a three-dimensional space yet challenge us to see the world in four dimensions. How does the freefall finish? How, indeed, did it start? Robb leaves our mind open to interpret our own narratives and use our imagination as a guide.

Works from a variety of series are included in this exhibition. Among them, Sohn Fine Art is the first gallery to unveil brand new series, “Threshold” and “Juno”. It is said that the Ancient Greeks perfected the nude in sculpture so that man had some sense of what it felt like to be a god. “Threshold” and “Juno” seem to have a similar aim. In the “Threshold” series, it is hard not to see the references to resurrection and ascension. We sense a liberation from this world, an ecstasy of flight. Each figure seems to rise, transported to the light of the portal. As the title suggests, figures move under the safeguard of Juno, the Roman goddess who championed women and protected the state, until they are ready to be taken out of their dance and raised to their seats in heaven. In this sense, “Juno”, like “Threshold”, is about the ascension of the human soul, about what it is to feel like to be a god.

Sohn Fine Art will also be exhibiting abstract florals and never-before-seen work from Robb’s new series, “Quotidian Objects”. These are still-lifes based on the works of Dutch masters Jan Van Huysum and Van Weenix. For this series, Robb hired the National Gallery’s florist to procure and arrange the still-lifes in the style of the masters, with a contemporary twist, and of course, a 3-dimensional perspective.