This composite combines my original photographs of a roller coaster, the Chicago skyline, and the Bean, reimagined within a surreal landscape of floating islands. By blending these architectural elements, I constructed a fabricated space where the roller coaster acts as both pathway and metaphor. It leads upward toward a city suspended in the sky, suggesting ambition, progress, and the thrill of striving toward an elevated ideal. However, the placement of the Bean on isolated islands and the small roller coaster flying off the edge introduce a sense of instability. What at first appears as a climb toward success ultimately becomes fragile and superficial, raising questions about the meaning of achievement when its foundations are uncertain.
By placing familiar urban landmarks in impossible contexts, this composite highlights the tension between fantasy and reality, accessibility and collapse. The work reflects both the exhilaration of striving and the inevitability of falling, encouraging viewers to consider how architectural spaces can symbolize human ambition and its limits.
Gabriel Florea’s Architectural blend, is a work in the air. A beam stretches into the sky like a bridge, attaching to a collection of floating islands. What looks to be the Charlotte skyline adorns the island. The composition also stretches vertically, agreeing with the vertical structure of the bridge, and drawing your eye upwards. In a utopian take on our city the bright saturated colors, fluffy clouds, and bright green grass, speak to a positive uplifting composition.
ReplyDeleteMy initial reference in the work is Frutiger Aero, an aesthetic very similar to the one depicted by Gabriel Florea. Bright skies and a sparkling city scape, rounded structures and a sense of being lighter than air. There is no logical reason for these islands to be floating, there is a sense of magic about the image. Everything in the image works to pull you towards the island, from a stretched vertical aspect ratio, to the composition's weight and perspective points being in one point perspective. So much focus on the island, it almost seems like a modern American dream, pulling you higher into the sky with a promise of a brighter future.
The work itself seems to stem from the original bridge structure, with a bright sky, then islands, a city scape, and minor lighting. The only issue of continuity in the project is that the treatment of light work the islands get, is not reflected in the bridge. And the lighting for the bridge is not congruent with the rest of the composition. Adding an area for the bridge to be attached or punctured into the island would more realistically ground the image. The project itself does blend architectural elements in an exciting style, and conveys its message of optimism and focus within the composition well using several elements. There are logical issues with the image, like that there is a bridge to the central island but not to the extending ones, but with the magical nature of the image that doesn’t remove your suspended sense of reality. Overall the use of composition and architectural elements found blend together to create a strong message.
That strong message is one of hope, they come together to offer an image into utopia. A utopia just out of reach. The opportunity is in sight, but you have not reached it yet. I leave the piece feeling very hopeful, and refreshed about the future. WIth thoughts of how much is out of my control, amazing opportunities may still be in sight. Though consciously it may have very little to do with the state of the world, when a large portion of media comments on the dreary state of the world this image attempts to create a positive distraction. Bright, hopeful eye candy pulling you in. Like a future promised to us by the Jettsons just a bridge away.
Through Gabriel Florea’s work, compositional elements of a bright sky and grass, along with a vertical composition, weighted heavily at the top, create a sense of awe. I walk away feeling brighter, and with a renewed sense of ability to find positivity in my day. Though it may be only a distraction, the dreamy scene created allows you to fall into its hypnosis if only for a moment.