Sol Hill - Signal From Noise

Sol Hill: Signal From Noise

Irving Arts Center presents the experimental camera-based work of California artist Sol Hill, who creates photographic images that explore how the literal can reveal unacknowledged realities. Signal from Noise encompasses beautiful and provocative pictures from two of Hill’s recent series, Token Feminine and Sublime Noise.

 

Both series display Hill’s involvement with digital noise – extraneous energy in the form of electrical current, heat, or cosmic rays that can affect the image. With the artist’s large-scale prints, digital noise is manifested by the visible, randomized colored pixels, along with long exposures and blurring, resulting from the movement of the subject or the camera. Varnish or acrylic gel texturally applied to the surface emphasizes the image’s physical presence. Ever interested in juxtaposed contradictions, Hill’s finished works are presented in ways that blur the boundaries between photography and painting. 

 

On exhibit in the Arts Center’s Carpenter Lobby Gallery, March 20 – October 30, 2021.



View the 360 tour below!

Share This 360° Tour!

Gallery Spotlight

Artist Talk

About The Artist

Sol Hill intentionally subverts the visual photographic record with artifacts that are endemic to digital imaging in order to reveal energies we normally do not see. He became interested in working this way while doing his MFA in photographic arts because he noticed everyone involved in the world of photography despised “digital noise.” He thought it would be wonderful to do something so compelling with these endemic but reviled artifacts that people would have to enjoy them, mostly to prove the point that nothing is inherently worthless or ugly… it just depends on how you look at it and where you put value.
 
Sol calls his work Metagraphs because the artifacts he works with are records of much more energy than just visible light. They are products of endemic camera system noise well as of “cosmic noise”, the wavelength energy signatures that emanate from the cosmos, our sun, our planet, our built environment and communication technology as well as our physical bodies. The image, thus, is transformed into a kind of hyper-vision both metaphorically and literally revealing more than we can see.
 
Sol prints his Metagraphs on Japanese paper, then applies them onto prepared painter’s substrates. He develops surface texture and gesture in acrylic to accentuate the ambiguity of the medium. His aim is to stimulate wonder both about the image, his process, his medium and their collective interpretation.

 

Learn More
Share by: