Reflection and geometric experimentation

After looking at Jelle Martens work and the idea of illusion and fragmentation I wanted to try experimenting with this idea myself. I went back to the text and looked at what could work and the maze in the book has a series of rooms that lead off from each other and one of them has a lamppost in snow that is reflected in mirrors that cover the walls to look like an endless hallway. 

I started by drawing the lamppost in snow ready to manipulate and I felt that graphite would allow me to create a soft glow around the lamp and get the contrast between white snow and night sky around the lamp.

Lamppost maze room graphite drawing

I then scanned that in and played around with fragmenting it to create a mirrored effect of parts of the lamp as if it was fractured in the light from the mirrors. I felt that a triangluar shape like in Jelle Martens work was a good idea as my tents are that shape so it might create a sense of unison between my imagery, but I also tried juxtaposing this with the spherical shapes to represent the round glow from the lamp.

I tried breaking it up this circular shape but I felt that not enough of the lamppost was on show but I liked the triangular pattern so I tried it in a larger triangle.

I reflected the lamppost a lot more in this shape which I felt gave it more a feeling of a mirror reflection and fractured look to it. I though that it seemed a shame to lose the original lamppost shape so my next step was to try combining them together.

This composition plays with the idea of the lamp being in the circular format like a light glowing on top of the triangle which is think works well but I don't know it feels too disjointed.

Here I have put the lamppost in the centre which i quite like as its softer than the image above and I like the way the bottom of the lamppost blends and meets part of the reflection in the triangle.

Overall I am happy with these experiments but I'm not sure they capture the sense of atmosphere and setting very well- they work nicely on their own but don't really work with some of the other ideas and collages I have also been working on. The next step is to think how i can include that sense of illusion or the unusual within my images and other collages. Perhaps some more abstract mechanical parts could work.