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Pictured in the glossy brochures of a travel agent, or recreated in the gradient hues of a poolside cocktail, the Caribbean sunset is an inescapable symbol of the wider region – recorded over and over, then repeatedly deployed. Started with a dose of chance, Gilleam Trapenberg’s New Suns became an almost scientific visual experiment; a study of colour to inspect a dominant image, imparting it with new and personal meaning.

After a golden hour photoshoot in Curaçao – for an unrelated project – Trapenberg instinctively filled his film roll, capturing several impressions of the setting sun as an abstract ball of light. Blown out and overexposed, the images were unusable, but the corresponding negatives retained more creative potential.

Back in Amsterdam, this material formed the basis of New Suns, its hazy shapes and light leaks reconfigured in a spectrum of enticing shades. Produced methodically over the course of a homesick winter, Trapenberg’s suns form a calendar of sorts, charting the nostalgic longing that comes with distance, In warm reds and oranges or cooler blues and greens, each sun oozes contradiction: probing at a familiar Caribbean fantasy, they simultaneously reveal the artist’s own susceptibility to it.

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