Artist Jaya Pelupessy (1989) is fascinated by the enormous role that photography plays in our everyday lives. We increasingly observe the world through a camera lens. We share moments and experiences through images and direct our own reality.
Pelupessy searches for a different understanding of the image through photographs, installations, and 16mm film. He does this by analysing and deconstructing historical reproduction techniques and using them in a different way to create an image. He invites us to reflect on how images are created and what that means for our perception of the world around us.
The title Manufactured Manual refers to the archival images that appear in this series of works. The images are taken from photography manuals that explain technical aspects such as which light is best in which situation or how best to capture a moving image. Pelupessy combines a selection of those archival photographs with contemporary image manipulations by using a screen-printing screen in a new way.
Pelupessy uses the photosensitive principle of the screen-printing technique and has developed special photosensitive colour emulsions. He creates an image directly on the screen-printing screen using multiple exposures in different coloured layers. In this way, the screen is no longer a means of reproducing images but becomes the work itself. This is typical of Pelupessy’s working method in which the creative process is always evident in the finished product.
Recent exhibitions of Jaya include a.o. Centraal Museum Utrecht, the Netherlands Photo Museum Rotterdam, FOAM Amsterdam, Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Frankfurt, Red Hook Labs New York, Mai Manó House Budapest, C/O Berlin, Tropenmuseum Amsterdam, FotoForum Innsbruck. His work is in the collections at FOAM Amsterdam, the Centraal Museum Utrecht, the Netherlands Photo Museum, the Tropenmuseum Amsterdam, and various corporate and private collections.