When Reuben Wu first noticed the nice and cozy sandstone hues and huge open skies of the American west, she was watching the sights passing by from the window of a tour bus.
The British visible artist, now based mostly in Chicago, is thought for his elegant photographs of distant landscapes, utilizing drone lighting, augmenting craggy peaks with halos, or inscribing glyphs into the sky like alerts from a supernatural presence. However for a very long time, artwork was only a ardour undertaking whereas he targeted on his music profession as one of many 4 members of the synth-pop group Ladytron.
“(Pictures) began out as an all-consuming pastime,” he defined in a telephone interview. However when Ladytron took a hiatus in 2011 after 5 studio albums (they launched a self-titled sixth album in 2019 and a seventh, “Time’s Arrow” this month), she began a brand new profession from the bottom up. “Whereas others have been doing their very own solo initiatives, making their very own music and releasing their very own albums, that was my solo undertaking.”
Wu’s photographs take a traditional photographer’s mixture – gentle and panorama – and mix the 2 in transformative methods. It normally begins with dim night gentle or the inky black shadows of the night time, then strategically illuminates elements of the scene with custom-built shopper drones. In a single picture, a shiny horizontal line suspended above a glacier within the Peruvian Andes reveals the glare of the ice towards a darkish sky. In a special transferring piece, Wu simulated {an electrical} storm in Goblin Valley, Utah, however with completely straight gentle strikes as a substitute of jagged lightning bursts.
The artist’s 2018 photobook “Lux Noctis” is within the Guggenheim and Museum of Trendy Artwork collections in New York, and has shot commercials for Apple, Audi and Google, in addition to DJ and music producer Zedd. Final summer time, Wu unveiled an enormous undertaking for Nationwide Geographic: a canopy story and time-lapse multimedia piece about Stonehenge that includes the enigmatic monument illuminated by particular drones. In November, certainly one of his NFTs, a 4K video loop titled “An Irresistible Power,” outperformed his excessive estimate, promoting for HKD 441,000 (about $56,500) at an public sale at Sotheby’s Hong Kong.
“I could not even think about the place I’m proper now,” Wu stated. “I simply needed to have the ability to make a dwelling doing artwork and pictures.”
alien inspiration
Wu has all the time withdrawn to wild, distant locations the place he can discover solitude. His mother and father had immigrated to the UK from Hong Kong earlier than he was born and grew up in Liverpool as an introverted boy, he stated, who did not fairly sustain with college. He was fascinated by sci-fi motion pictures that blended the alien with on a regular basis life, equivalent to Steven Spielberg’s “Shut Encounters of the Third Variety,” which featured Wyoming’s Devils Tower as a spot for extraterrestrial contact. (Unfamiliar with American topography, he initially thought the hill, a nationwide monument, was a fictional geological entity, he defined with fun.)
The movie’s visuals of distant desert scenes blended with eerie lights supplied formative inspiration for his personal work. “The thought of these seemingly unimaginable lights transferring throughout the sky is ingrained in my mind, like searchlights in very unusual (American) landscapes,” he stated.
Reuben Wu has traveled extensively for his job to distant places within the US and past. Right here he traveled to the salt flats of Bolivia, utilizing the huge wasteland as his canvas. Credit score: Ruben Wu
Practically a decade after getting a style of the highway with Ladytron, he launched into his first nationwide pictures journey throughout the US in 2013. The ensuing collection included vivid depictions of the Grand Canyon and the South Dakota Badlands, in addition to a time-lapse view of Devils Tower at night time among the many star trails.
Two years later, Wu found the influence of drone lighting on the pure world whereas engaged on an out of doors automotive shoot.
“I flew the drone over some cliffs and was completely mesmerized by the impact it had on the precise panorama,” he defined. He made the cliffs glow by reaching areas that have been unimaginable to light up artificially.
Wu’s first inspiration got here from “Shut Encounters of the Third Variety,” which sparked America’s curiosity within the West. Credit score: Ruben Wu
Wu locations lights on drones to satisfy their wants for any shoot or undertaking. He stated the primary iteration he used whereas the expertise was nonetheless in improvement was a “huge” eight-rotor drone geared up with selfmade lights with a flight time of solely about eight minutes. The following used a 3D-printed bracket with an LED heat gentle, however nonetheless gave it simply two extra minutes within the air. The expertise he used now offers him somewhat extra respiratory room, he has half an hour to fly away, seize photographs and return to it, however he needed to be taught to work inside the confines of every setup.
“I am lots much less frightened now as a result of I’ve shot down a couple of drones,” he stated. “And in the long run, they’re simply instruments.”
experimental collection
After creating a collection of nonetheless photographs experimenting with ghostly lighting and geometric shapes within the sky, equivalent to “Lux Noctis” and “Aeroglyphs,” Wu realized that he needed to include motion and sound into his work due to his musical background. He started creating 15-second video loops of his own-produced atmospheric digital music beats, displaying patterns of sunshine beams or photographs of the moon arcing by the sky.
“These[things]have been very experimental and had no final function – they have been simply issues I did out of affection,” he stated. “I could not license them, I could not print them… and that is why they have been there, getting likes on my Instagram.”
Wu was commissioned to shoot in quite a lot of places, together with the New Mexico badlands. This picture got here from a 20-hour shoot. Credit score: Ruben Wu
However in January 2021, when Wu was launched to the artwork of NFT, he discovered a strategy to make them a extra necessary a part of his profession. He minted his first “non-exchangeable coin” two months later on the market Basis – an “aeroglyph” of shiny strains forming a rectangle on a beachside cliff. It was offered for 30 ETH ($45,000), a part of which was donated to the Nationwide Parks Conservation Society and the AAPI Group Fund. Later that 12 months, the web3 arts group Obscura commissioned him to provide a brand new collection of photographs referred to as “Aeroglyph Variations.” totally different lighting situations and patterns. Wu additionally experimented with presenting work in several methods, from animations to AR experiences, to projection mapping of movement photos onto bodily prints.
“It is extra of a hybrid surroundings, and so I need to broaden that horizon even additional and take into consideration the last word purpose for my work,” he stated. “Am I creating a stupendous piece of artwork for individuals to take a look at and admire, or do I create an expertise for individuals to share?”
Wu tends in direction of the latter as he continues to experiment with the shape his work takes, however his imaginative and prescient and method to the pure world stays constant regardless of the setting.
“Lots of people all the time say that my work is otherworldly – that is the primary phrase individuals consider when they consider my work,” he stated. “However I am not attempting to create an alien-looking picture; I am attempting to point out that that is our planet. And there are such a lot of new methods to see it that may refresh your perspective.”
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