Tim White-Sobieski

“Awakening”

"Route 17 North",

"Confession",

"The Sound And The Fury",

"Closer To Fall",

"Before They Were Beatles"

(series “Awakening”)

Photography series , figurative works, related to age of adolescence and teenagehood

Editioned as a series of 20 large format photographic prints,
72 x 108 inches (180 W X 274 H cm), and 48 x 60 inches (120 x 180 cm) prints
faced mounted to archival plexiglass with aluminum back and aluminum frame
Printed as an edition of 5 and as a portfolio of 42 mid-size prints in a custom-made box
with a brochure with artists’ description and complete book text,
Portfolio edition of 10, printed at 12 x 18 inches (30 x 45 cm) each.

About the project:

The video-photography exhibition “Awakening” and the series of the large-scale photographs are united by the image of a boy whose images were explored in the earlier works by Tim White-Sobieski in projects "Sweet Dreams", "Before They Were Beatles", “The Sound and the Fury”, etc. Lined up, these videos and photographs would present a story of growing up and maturing of the contemporary American generation. This generation dismisses symbols of all-American youth of the 1960s-1980s; they are more worldly examples of awakening minds and souls.

The video is composed of symbols easily perceived and interpreted - birds, the road, rising sun, multiplicity of one figure, etc. It is the cinematic skill of the artist that subtly points out at each one of them manifesting questions about life's value and meaning.

Within three minutes of running time the artist asks his questions with urgency and insistency of a young man who makes his first personal decisions in life - on behalf of the entire generation. Young protagonist of the "Awakening" project appears as a unique, ingenious personality that opens his eyes and heart to different prospects before him. He has a great future ahead of him full of promises, he has "the world on a string" just like yo-yo he throws and catches in a blink of an eye...

This video, like many other works in these series, is an excursion into painting and music, where the artist captures conceptualized moment of time. The system of signs in video and photography possesses a deep poetry, a sense of wonder and magic. The photography project mixes cinematic and literary modes, fuses reality and dreams, objective and subjective, through visionary approach to philosophic storytelling.

In the series “Awakening”, the main hero is used in multiplication of a figure – photographs titled “Gang”, “Cherry Walk”, “Shadows”, “Birds”. These images symbolize extensions of his structures of time rather than mechanical replications.  The concept of similarity and analogy in interpersonal communication is defined as subjective experience of freedom and fantasy.

The series traces intellectual and creative awakening of a teenager who suddenly realizes - with all the brilliance of youth - that life is only a moment between the past and the future, childhood and the old age. Having realized that, the hero makes a breakthrough towards creative heights of his potential. The birds, the piano music, the dreamy cityscapes of his imagination surround this personage. His journey into unknown begins. The video and the photographs of the series “Awakening” are not the illustration of philosophical ideas, but represent, again, the artist’s emergence of reflection and argument on the meaning of life.