PHOSPHENES: Osheen Harruthoonyan

Close your eyes tightly. Now, rub them with your hands. Press Firmly. Hold. Watch.

 The shapes that emerge are reminiscent of what you’ve just seen. And yet, entirely different. New colors. New dimensions. A different way of experiencing what was, and is, from within.

 Phosphenes is a re-imagining of our divergent inner realities. Whether through ecstasy or deep sadness – or, perhaps, the isolation of a pandemic, the pieces capture the state of living in a world oddly familiar, yet suddenly individualized. A landscape not entirely unknown, and yet entirely uninhabited.

Weaving together the familiar and foreign, Harruthoonyan pushes the viewer to question their subconscious states

 In it, metaphysical realities are re-imagined as planetary systems. Here, there are new laws of nature. Fauna fills the sky where fog once formed. Starlings turn to stars. Matter forms from silicon, instead of carbon mass, Bluebirds take the place of distant constellations. A young girl swallows a star.

 Phosphenes was developed after the artist experienced the death of his father remotely in 2020. It is an invitation from the artist to re-imagine our lived experiences in a place unbound, full of lightness, freedom and beauty.  

Phosphenes - the luminous floating stars, zigzags, swirls, spirals, squiggles, and other shapes that you see when closing your eyes tight and pressing them firmly with your fingers.

All silver prints are printed on Ilford multigrade paper.
Lith prints are a mix of Ilford warm tone, Forte, Foma 111.

All created by hand by manipulating the emulsion of film. No photoshop filters. Osheen also makes his own sepia and gold toners.