To be a surrealist means barring from your mind all remembrance of what you have seen,and being always on the look-out for what has never been. Rene Magritte (1898-1967)

For inspiration photographer Dominic Rouse looks to the paintings of Surrealist artists Salvador Dali, M.C. Escher and Rene Magritte, as well as the writings of Franz Kafka and Philip Larkin. In his ongoing body of work entitled 'Haunted by a Painter's Ghost', the artist emulates a mode of expression that writers and visual artists explored throughout the first half of the twentieth century. The unconventional situations, settings and tableaux imagined by the Surrealists mirrored their own eccentric lifestyles which challenged art, politics, religion and all societal conventions. The Surrealists were transfixed by the working of the subconscious which they endeavoured to illustrate through the juxtaposition of the everyday with the absurd and the fantastic.

While the surrealist painters could explore infinite possibilities in the subject matter of their work, the early photographic practitioners had to contend with the limitations of the medium. Experimenting with multiple exposure, photomontage and other photographic manipulations the Surrealists would push the existing technological boundaries of the medium to achieve their vision. Utilising state-of-the-art digital imaging tools Dominic Rouse fashions his own interpretataion of the Surrealistic aesthetic, employing many of the same elements such as architectural details from the Gothic period, religious iconography and the altered dismembered nude figure. After scanning the original photographs he combines and transforms them into a singular work which is rendered back onto film and then archivally printed in the darkroom. The style of Rouse's imagery appears to be rooted in the past, but relies heavily on a very sophisticated skill and mastery of digital technology and traditional photographic processes. While art historians might consider the Surrealist period over and done, Dominic Rouse demonstrates there are still more paths left unexplored.

Gary Hesse
Associate Director
Light Work