Folded Cyanotype 116
Cyanotype fluid on paper, 12" x 16", 2021
Artist: Fritz Horstman

Simultaneously depictions of water, ice, and broken space, my Folded Cyanotypes are all of those things and none of them. Subjectivity and objectivity oscillate when one looks closely at the systems that make up our world. Aspects of nature that may at first appear fixed and unchanged by the human world take on fluid and fungible features when closely observed. What may seem to be highly personal can expand to something universal. This perceptual fluidity informs the formal, spatial, and environmental concerns that run through all of my Folded Cyanotypes.

Folded Cyanotypes is a series of two-dimensional objects, which carry the memory of light, three-dimensional space and manual manipulation, and which stem from an interest in natural structures. They are made by first folding paper by hand into an intricate pattern. After unfolding it, cyanotype photographic fluid is applied. Working in the dark to protect the light-sensitive material, the paper is refolded, then placed in natural light, and sometimes manipulated using mirrors and lenses. The paper is then rinsed in water, and pressed flat to dry. What was exposed to light in the process turns blue when developed, and what was not remains white, furthering the spatial complications by reversing lightness and darkness.

By conflating and overlapping the subjective and objective, form and void, flatness and three-dimensionality, nature and culture, my Folded Cyanotypes celebrate the potential of fluidity.

Fritz Horstman is an artist, educator, and curator based in Bethany, Connecticut. He has shown his Folded Cyanotypes and related work in exhibitions across Europe and the US, most recently in a solo show at Jennifer Terzian Gallery in Litchfield, CT. He is education director at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, where he has worked since 2004.

fritzhorstman.com