Place
Berndnaut Smilde is a visual artist and photographer who has created a series of installations exploring the theme of place by creating indoor clouds. He visited a number of buildings to create his images, such as the Hotel MariaKapel in the Netherlands and Aspremont-Lynden Castle in Belgium. Smilde creates the clouds with an indoor smoke machine, reducing the temperature and adjusting the humidity of the room by spraying water. This creates the environment needed for the smoke to create its cloud-like form for long enough to capture the image. This is because the moisture sticks to the smoke making it heavier. As the cloud isn’t something he can control, he takes hundreds of images and chooses one to be used as the final piece.
The image that I like the most is called The Nimbus Green Room, which was created at the Sun Francisco War Memorial and Preforming Arts Centre, which the Dutch artists describes as being kitsch with great architectural ornaments. I chose this image because of the mood of the photo, which is visually calming. It almost looks like the cloud is floating over a dark body of water with the wall resembling the colour of the sky. This resemblance could be being made because normally this object is seen in a different setting. But instead, the polished wooden floors and green walls with sharp straight edges are nothing like what is found outdoors in nature. I also find the aspect of making your own atmosphere very intriguing. The Mirror behind the cloud shows the room continuing on and the cloud is given more dimension due to this reflection. The Green Room is an interpretation of the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles in France.
Although Berndnaut created the cloud, he is rarely the photographer of his work and commonly enlists the help of local professional photographers instead. For the Nimbus Green Room he worked with a photographer called RJ Muna. Berndnaut Smilde likes to find places that deal with duality of the situation, the architectural aspects and using situations that are without purpose or function, therefore leaving the interpretation open to the viewer.
