Popel

LMAKgallery is pleased to present Popel Coumou's second solo exhibition titled Popel. This exhibit features two series of photographs in which she emphasizes the importance of light and pushes the element of her signature abstracted narrative into a new realm: the silent contemplation of emptiness.

In the series she started in 2015, Popel began to erase the presence of her photographed subject and re-interpreted its horizon, from a point of reference into abstraction. The horizon becomes a line or the sun a dot, adjusting the assumed narrative to the origins of abstract art and the essence of composition. This echoes the steps taken by her illustrious predecessors from De Stijl, such as Mondrian and Van der Leck and the Suprematist Malevich.

In the series that followed, the act of eradicating the landscape to its bare essence looks like an overexposed image, but upon closer inspection reveals Popel's style of collaging abstract form into and interacting within a natural environment. The white on white work resolves the balance between logic and nature through invisibility; present in its own absence. A quality that is achieved in the act of collage, as it offers Popel the unique ability to deal with form and structure like a painter and yet deal with the assumed reality and romantic narrative of photography. This crossover play with visual language makes the work monumental.

Popel Coumou is a Dutch photographer whose work has been collected and shown by Gemeente Museum Den Haag, Het Domein, Foam, Huis Marseille, Statoil, the Dutch Ministry, AMC and Dela. Recently her work is shown in Art Centre Mechelen, Belgium and at Photo Dubai. Her work has been recognized through such prices as the Foam Talent, Mercure Cultuur price, won the Hyères Photography competition and nominated for the Paul Huf Award. She recently had a mini-retrospective of her work in the Cultural Museum of Mechelen in Belgium.