Set against the science fiction backdrop of a crowdless and LED-lined arena, Drew Brown's AIRGAP depicts a cold and intimate world of contact sport. On the ice, we follow plastic-clad hockey players as they rotate through shifts of observation, play, and recovery. We see helmets clap together in a scrum against the boards, the exhale of wet air on plexiglass, and a player's face cut by shadow as he enters the penalty box. Outside of the rink, players engineer their bodies to perform and rebuild; one man disappears into a cylinder of cryo-smoke, another strains over a training bike, his breath turned to data by a machine. Experiential and evidentiary, these photographs throw light on glass, sweat, wounds, and ice, equalising the physical details of the game and its effects on the body. Splicing ice hockey with a hallucinatory space ride, AIRGAP drops the viewer into a realm where humans and technology merge under a grid of electric light. Published by TBW Books (Oakland).
76 pages, 30.5 x 24.1cm, softcover, TBW Books (Oakland).