young projects
A CONTEMPORARY ART SPACE DEVOTED TO THE MOVING IMAGE
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Presentism:
Light as Material
Jan 31 - March 8, 2014
Entryway (left from the outside)
(flatscreen in window)
Tinkerbell 2 2010
Dominik Stauch
1 channel of a 4 channel HD video file, flatscreen, dimensions variable, stereo sound, looped
Editioned
A representation of a light beam set to a musical composition by the artist. Op art, visual music, minimalism, maximalism, superflat and more all rolled into an endless loop
(in far window corner)
Dimensions (After Bochner) 2014
Pablo Valbuena
Site Specific Video Projection on Architecture
Projector, computer, infinite loop
Whether working with cut paper, wood cuts, prints or actual wall surfaces, Bochner has emphasized the work’s dimensions as a formal quality and/or graphic.
(In blackened area)
Even the Greatest Stars Discover themselves in the Looking Glass; an allegory of a cave (2014)
Casey Reas
Custom software, two computers, projector, camera, mirror, controllers, 3 chairs
Unique
Look in the mirror and see your image combining with points of light, yet simultaneously others are viewing through a different medium and changing it in real time. The star only sees the looking glass, while viewers only see interpreted/mediated versions of their own creation.
Entryway (right)
Untitled01 2014
John Carpenter
Interactive video, kinect, custom software, customized black cabinet, frosted glass, dimensions variable
1/6
Thomas Wilfred was an artist of the 1920s and the founder of the Art Institute of Light. He was a pioneer in creating light boxes, or Lumia’s, that seem to contain the most ephemeral of light. Carpenter’s piece brings that idea into the current age by adding the element of human movement
The Rainbow Refers Not to a Chaste Abstraction but to a Life in Art (after Walter Benjamin) 2014
Amy-Claire Huestis
Oil on aluminum panel, electric slide projector, glass prism 40” x 8” x 26”
Unique
Walter Benjamin writes: "Productive adults derive no support from colour; for them colour can subsist only within law-given circumstances. Their task is to provide a world order, not to grasp innermost reasons and essences but to develop them. In a child's life, colour is the pure expression of the child's pure receptivity, insofar as it is directed at the world." Benjamin is reminding us (adults) that we may also (like children) step outside of the law-given order and experience the world rather within its plastic field of nuance, of a pure soulful receptivity. One may invert this idea of perception as existing inside the mind -- understand perception as outside of the mind and one steps into the plastic field.
Magic Lantern Glass Slides
Amy-Claire Huestis
Hand-painted glass slides used in the live performance, “The Sequel to the Fairyland of Science” 2014 as well as Starfarer 2014
Each is Unique
Huestis works with light sculpture and installation by using both pre-cinematic technologies—namely vintage magic lanterns (and video animation) to develop a historic and cosmological perspective on the phenomena of seeing and the material aspect of light.
Untitled (44864) 2007
James Turrell
Reflection Hologram
Unique
Courtesy of Tim Yarger Fine Art
Ephemeral, intangible, and magical; a light beam encased in glass
main gallery
(clockwise, left to right)
Para-Site (3 plinths) 2014
Pablo Valbuena
Video projection on architecture (3 plinths), HD video, computer
1/3
For this piece the artist found three existing pedestals in the gallery and used them for a site-specific projection that was designed on-site. The result is an ode to a number of minimalist works, especially those of Sol LeWitt
Starfarer 2014
Amy-Claire Huestis
25 minutes, 3 channel HD video installation with magic lantern and slide projectors.
12 hand-painted and hand operated magic lantern slides (in acetate and glass with wooden frames), fabric ellipse, 29 feet, HD video capture of hand painted magic lantern projections
1/5
Stars are time machines—each reflects back the light from ages ago. In Huestis’s work, each star was created by projecting a star image—hand painted by the artist--onto a shimmering cloth, and shot individually. The combined collage of images is combined with vintage magic lanterns that project planets and other heavenly bodies (changed daily).
Motion & Rest #2 (2002)
Jim Campbell
768 LED lights, 24x28” panel, custom software and circuit board
Ed: AP
An early LED work by one of the most important pioneers of electronic art from the West Coast.
mid area (right)
(large 16:9 projection screen)
Trailers_Anemone 2013
John Carpenter
Interactive Projection, HD Projector, Kinect, custom software, Dimensions variable
1/3
A planetary system? Bodies in motion? Your body engages with light to create new patterns and interference.
mid area (left-passageway)
(wall sculpture)
Forked Series 11 (2008)
Chul Hyun Ahn
Plywood box, fluorescent tubes, mirrors 21x21x4
Unique
Courtesy Tim Yarger Fine Art
Another reference to light artists and minimalists of the past, in this case of Dan Flavin
(large LED work at end of the room)
Homage (2007)
Stanley Casselman
Acrylic on Polystretch, programmed LEDs, custom software, 7’6” x 5’ , 17 min loop
Unique
Mark Rothko was said to walk into galleries that were showing his paintings and turn off the lights.
small back room
Volta (2005)
Robin Fox
Cathode Ray Oscilloscope, SD projection, Projector, 5 flatscreens, video splitter, 5-channel audio system
5/5
Sound is sent directly from a sound card into a cathode ray oscilloscope (CRT). Therefore the electrical signal that makes the speakers move is also displacing a single beam of light that traces across a phospherous screen leaving traces of light for long enough to create a persistence of vision.
back hallway
(print on wall)
Motion Extraction Series (The Passion) 2012
Kurt Ralske
Archival print
Ed: 1/5
Famously burned at the stake for heresy, Joan of Arc was possessed by an inner light. Fire extinguishes fire. In Ralske’s print, every single frame of Carl Theodore Dreyer’s “The Passion of Joan of Arc” is captured on light sensitive paper. An entire movie in a single frame.
(flatscreen in nook)
Tinkerbell (3) 2010
Dominik Stauch
HD video file, flatscreen, dimensions variable, stereo sound, looped
Editioned
large back room
Fluids 2014
Refik Anadol
LCD Sculpture: Translucent Display, SD card, media player 7” x 4.5” 12min loop
1/6
Monilithics / Peruvian Landscape 2014
Refik Anadol
Parametric Sculpture (CNC Milled form), foam, silicon, screen goo, HD projection, mapping, computer, 8’ x 4’ Run time: 60min. Sound composition by Curtis Tamm
1/3
A contemporary sculpture using the language of both, geometric abstraction and finish fetish.
Anadol’s work is also a reference to Laszlo Moholy-Nagy light works from the 1920s, when he used to project light onto, and through, sculptures. Indeed, Moholy-Nagy’s comments from 1928 seem apropos today: “Sculpture that depends on illusion must effectively be kinetic since only through the action of opposing forces can it be brought into balance, to equipoise… The next step beyond equipoise is kinetic equipoise, in which the volume relationships are virtual ones, ie, resulting mainly from the actual movement of the contours, rings and other forms. Here the material is employed as a vehicle of motion. To the third dimension of volume a fourth (time) is added.”
Featuring the spatial-temporal, light-based work of James Turrell, Jim Campbell, Casey Reas, Pablo Valbuena, Stanley Casselman, Robin Fox, Refik Anadol, Amy-Claire Huestis, Kurt Ralske, Dominik Stauch, John Carpenter and Chul Hyun Ahn
“There is such a thing as the impression of luminosity” –Ludwig Wittgenstein
Life as we know it would not exist without light. It is the very embodiment of the life-force, the fountainhead, and perhaps the very root of all material in the known world as some philosophers and poets have argued. With that in mind, it’s hardly surprising that the image of light has remained a potent symbol for mankind—one that has been used for over 4,000 years as the very representation of power, truth, knowledge, love, peace, health, unity, and the highest state of being.
It has also played a crucial role in art, of course, whether we’re talking about the discovery of the camera obscura in the 4th century, which ultimately led to the dawn of photography in the 17th century; or the sumptuous and/or symbolic use of light in the paintings of Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Vermeer or thousands more. However, with the emergence of the Modern age—and the introduction of the electric light bulb—the idea of light began to change in the 19th and 20th centuries. Impressionism for instance, which signaled a major shift in conceptual approaches, was dubbed “The birth of light in painting” by Robert Delaunay. And not long after that the legendary Bauhaus professor and artist, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, began projecting light through sculptures, which later became known as one of the earliest forms of “light art.”
For those artists the ideal was to capture light and make it tangible. Perhaps Otto Pienne’s comments about his “light ballets” of the mid 1960s summed up the idea best when he said, “There is one essential difference between Gothic Cathedrals and rockets: a cathedral seems to soar, expressing a yearning for ascension, while a rocket does soar. The same technical difference exists between traditional sculpture and light works. Previously paintings and sculptures suggested a glow while today paintings and sculptures do glow. They are active, they give; they do not merely attract the eyes, they do not merely express something, they are something.”
The advent of lasers, satellite transmissions and supercomputers in the 1960s helped artists like Pienne to realize that ‘glow,’ but it wasn't until a group of California artists began to strip the technology away from the equation to make a more pure expression of light—where the glow was not only ‘something’ but the very content of the work itself. And for these artists, that content suggested something monumental, something infinite, something beyond space and time itself. Indeed, for the Light & Space artists of that period, light could express an extraordinarily wide range of complex spatial-temporal ideas (and perhaps multiple dimensions) with a directness and ease that no other medium could. James Turrell, who’s included in the exhibition, remains the quintessential reference point for this discussion. For him light had the power to bring up very raw, and very direct feelings. “Light is a powerful substance,” he says. “We have a primal connection to it. But, for something so powerful, situations for its felt presence are fragile. I like to work with it so that you feel it physically, so you feel the presence of light inhabiting a space. I like the quality of feeling that is felt not only with the eyes.”
Presentism is an attempt to focus on the next generation of artists who are working within the same continuum, yet doing so with the technologies of today, namely the digital. As the title suggests, these works share an interest in the present tense, as opposed to the ‘recorded’ or ‘canned’ experiences of most moving image art-forms. (The speed of light tends to define our notions of past, present and future since one might be able to experience time travel if he or she could travel faster than light). What all the artists in the show share is an intense interest in using light to convey something that touches us in ways that other mediums cannot.
Works in the exhibition:
