Sculptured Spaces. Photoworks by Egied Simons

Leo Delfgaauw (1990)
Perspektief no. 38, May 1990, pp. 52-58

In Egied Simons' photoworks spaces are reduced to ground plans.

For a sculptor to employ photography seems to be a contradiction. At first sight, after all, the flat two-dimensionality of a photograph is difficult to reconcile with the plasticity of sculpture. The problematic relationship between photography and sculpture has already been addressed in Perspektief , it now appears again in the work of Egied Simons.
Egied Simons studied sculpture at the Rotterdam Academy of Fine Art. His large-scale photoworks have been represented in several exhibitions. In April 1989 his work was shown at Perspektief.

Egied Simons is fascinated by such essentially sculptural concepts as space, light and perception. In the attempt to give form to such immaterial concepts, photography has proved to be a suitable medium for him.
Representing space in two dimensions has for centuries been a basic problem that by definition could only be solved by means of certain expedients. Greater spatiality was seen as greater realism; this realism culminated in the discovery of linear perspective during the Renaissance. The principle of foreshortening, which created the suggestion of spatiality, acquired a rational mathematical basis. Space could then be calculated and depicted according to fixed rules. The importance of linear perspective remained sacrosanct for centuries and reached its mechanical consummation in the 19th century with the discovery of photography.
Simons' photoworks can be seen as visual research into spatial structures. To this end he photographs places bordered by architectonic forms. Architecture determines space by giving it forms and by defining and dividing it. Photography does not in itself determine space, but translates it onto a flat surface. Sculpture, on the other hand, can only manifest itself in space by taking possession of it.
It is these different qualities that Simons is continually and inventively exploring in his works. This is clear, for example, in his photographs of tunnels and other spaces where the light penetrates only sparingly and we look into the unfathomable depth of a black hole. Space is reduced here to a suggestive and poetic abstraction. As in the work of Jan Dibbets in the early Seventies, light plays an important role in Simons' photographic registrations of space.

In Simons' photoworks of apartment ceilings the fall of light reveals how the individual spaces are connected with each other and with the outside. Taking photographs of the ceiling systematically from the center point of each room, he then assembled the photographs in the right arrangement like a sort of inverted floor-plan, thereby creating what he calls an "analysis of a spatial situation".
Egied Simons had previously carried out a similar project with streets, each time photographing perpendicularly from the middle of the street, and joining the photographs together afterwards so as to create an irregularly running, inverted pattern of streets. Space is literally centered here, enclosed on each side by the architecture's sculptural facades and roof structures.
Simons developed various plans to realize his photoworks on a monumental scale, so that they enter into a relationship with the actual architectonic space where they would be sited. He designed works for the Rotterdam City Theatre and De Doelen, and made a large semi-circular photo-mural of 'pattern of streets' in the public library in Zeist. Recently he was commissioned to design a project for the city of Utrecht which was shown in the Centraal Museum in March and April 1990. At certain street corners in one of the districts of the city he took photos with his camera pointing upwards, making as it were a sort of city plan seen from below. In the final design the photographs were placed on a wall in their correct inter-relationship.
Simons' interest in light and space has also led him to make a number of 'light installations' using neon light-boxes to divide space into light and dark compartments, thus suggesting spatial boundaries in a subtle way. Spatial structures and processes are the themes of Simons' work. As a sculptor and photographer he is carrying out elementary research that results in fascinating 'images'.