"IMAGINARY LIGHT

"My work is an intersection between static and performing art. I search for and create landscapes that contain a mysterious element around which a narrative can be developed. The photographs imply a documentation of phenomenon, a secret supernatural or extraordinary event in the natural world. Ubiquitous features within an environmen...t such as trees, earth, and bodies of water are isolated and altered."

"In actuality an act, a fiction, is being created with light, color, and framing, pulling the viewer into a new, somewhat mythical narrative. I approach my work with a theatrical sensibility, using light and color subjectively as tools to transform the perception of space in the images."

"By de-familiarizing common objects , the photographs transform the ordinary into the hyper-real, a banal landscape into a singular sensation. Dimensional objects appear to be flat, areas understood to be flat imply deep space. Lines between reality and imagination shift. The mundane and the seemingly familiar become significant, and act as semiotic informers."
Barry Underwood' s Statement.


Barry Underwood's large super-saturated color prints are striking at first glance. In fact, a fiction is being created here with light, color, and framing, pulling the viewer into a new, somewhat mythical environment. Issues relating to contemporary painting and film also come into play as the artist considers illusion, imagination, and narrative, the potential of the ordinary transformed into the extraordinary through light and composition. Underwood's surreal photographs are a cross-pollination between static and performing art. The photographs suggest a happening-a secret unnatural moment in the natural world-that the artist has chanced upon and been able to record. When thinking about the genesis of these works, Underwood drew less from the realm of the fantastic and instead looked to his immediate surroundings to draw inspiration, fusing autobiography with fiction.

Barry Underwood is currently an Assistant Professor and Chair of the Department of Film, Video, and Photographic Arts at the Cleveland Institute of Art. His work has been exhibited nationally and is included in several corporate and private collections.