Digital on Canvas

An exhibition of digital "still frame" images by Laszlo George

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The following essay was written especially for the exhibition by Antonina Garm

"Laszlo George was raised in a small rural village near the Austro/Hungarian border. For the first decade of his life, Laszlo grew up with only candles and lanterns as his source of indoor light. At the age of ten, while on a class field trip to a local mill, Laszlo George peered into an electric light bulb and his relationship to light was forever changed. Thus began his life long fascination with light and its relationship to the surrounding world.

For more than 50 years Laszlo has experimented with light through cinematography in more than 100 films. His work in film established him as a master of light in cinematography. His awards for his work in cinematography are numerous as well as global. Laszlo George is a name well recognized and respected in the world of film.

In this exhibit, Digital on Canvas, light and colour are again the two primary driving themes that inform Laszlo’s art. Moving away from his traditional medium of film Laszlo translates his love of light and colour onto canvas through the latest archival pigment technology. The result is one of the most exciting yet transcendent explorations of light in and through colour on canvas.

The colours, carefully chosen and constructed, are infused with light, drawing on the same talent Laszlo has for lighting in film. Cool indigo blues, harvested from Monet’s palette, are captured in Laszlo’s photographic process with the same skill and impact as the original master. Background hues from the Renaissance are warmed with sweeps of electric colour, so bold but congruent they stop the admirer in their tracks as they realize the perfect balance between old masters of light and the new.

The historic and contemporary inspiration of the art masters is here and yet this body of work is completely new and vibrant. The light on these canvases is at times natural, electric, celestial, poetic, strong, stimulating, and arousing. However it is Laszlo’s endless talent for and understanding of light that translates the medium into pure and exciting art.

Colours explored through Laszlo’s unique relationship with light give the sense that the colours are new and reinvented. Your experience of light and colour is changed through this exhibit.

Feel the heat and energy vibrating off the canvas and enjoy an exhibit intended to forever change, challenge and inspire your relationship to light and colour  - Antonina Garm -  April 2008

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Click on images to enlarge

"This exhibition has evolved over a lifetime of looking through a camera’s viewfinder with an experienced and creative eye. The images on show bear witness to the fact that, as a cinematographer, Laszlo George has learnt to see things in a way most people never will.

The term “still frame” refers to a single image taken from a movie sequence. Although none of the images on show are actual still frames from any movie, they have been informed by many years of studying images formed by traditional film movie cameras in the time it takes the camera to get up to its operating speed of 24 frames per second. These images are usually distorted and blurred and consequently discarded as irrelevant. Laszlo has always been fascinated by such visual anomalies and has developed a unique technique of “fooling” a digital single lens reflex camera into capturing images it would normally not. 

This technique combined with his love of light and colour has resulted in an exhibition of enigmatic beauty as yet unseen in contemporary digital photography." -  Noel Hodnett  –  April 2008

Quotes from the exhibition Guest Book:  

"A gift of vision",   "Mysteriously familiar  - beautiful",   "Thank you for a new vision of light",   "Once again, a Winner!", "Amazing photography",   "La poesie dans la lumiere",   You have brought colour alive!"

“Digital on Canvas” by Laszlo George took place between April 17 and May 16, 2008 at Hodnett Fine Art Studio Gallery,  320 – 1000 Parker Street, Vancouver, V6A 2H2, Canada.

Gallery Hours: 10am – 4pm Monday to Friday or by Special Appointment

Tel: +1-604-876-7606 – Fax: +1-604-876-0166

email: hodnettfineart@canada.com