Head on Horizon: Redux 2000-2009, light, (digital projection, 2009 in collaboration with L.J. Douglas), mixed media, dimensions variable
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Writing about one's own artwork is often difficult. The main task is finding palpable meaning to share with others when the work is familiar to the maker. Information can be left out, or omitted entirely, depending on the artist's literary inclination at the time of critique or observational writing.
The following article displays stills and a video, accompanied by an essay about a sculpture I have worked on since 2000. The essay is based on thoughts about the sculpture at the time of its first iteration, along with new physical additions and explorations into digital projection.
I hope to use kinetic sculpture to reinforce the idea of the mutable nature of art that uses "Time" as a capricious, but necessary component, allied with other more tangible materials.
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A condensed metaphor for memory operates in the mechanical action of Head on Horizon: Redux. First exhibited in 2000, the sculpture is based on an event from the past when I watched a car's headlights shine over a very long distance, through my apartment window and onto a wall adjacent to my bed.
The car's projected light had a way of compressing low-lying forms (in shadow) over distance onto a single, flat surface. It occurred to me that every instance of activity within the shadows of those objects was unrelated, yet I began constructing a visual story from the accumulating collection of silhouetted forms.
As cars approached and rolled past, the projected shadows were rife with endless variation. And although these silhouetted forms were compressed into flat non-descript shapes, it was not difficult to imagine their origins; plants moving with the breeze, grass blades tramped down by roaming, nocturnal animals, rocks, frantic insects scurrying during the cool of the evening, endless forms of detritus, and then finally... the shadow of my own head.
"At the time of the experience with the light, the event was little more than another form of "play" with no more than the ethereal shadows and projections on the wall of my room. The projected "shadow objects" were playthings. Abstract forms reconstructed as members of a community of interacting players on a compressed landscape."
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In Head on Horizon: Redux, a digital animation working in conjunction with tungsten light is projected onto the 2000 version, a constructed, highly abstracted landscape, made of wood, aluminum and glass. The sculpture takes its idea from the original occurrence of the projected silhouettes and attempts to expand the visual experience, thus channeling other areas of human memory and our tendency to construct stories.
There is a very gratifying feeling that comes from visual memory; from the sensations produced by objects in the landscape, and those object's material willingness to function as visual markers in a shared experience.
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I would like to thank L.J. Douglas, for her intelligence, skill and creative excellence in collaborating on the production of the animated component of this work. Also Doug Johnson, Director of the McLean County Art Center for his faith in my work, and his help and expertise in producing this wonderful video. I thank Alison Hatcher, for her original idea to do an installation, and for her guidance and skill in forming this show and many exhibitions at the center. I thank Rob Fifield for his help in the preparation and installation of the work in this show. Thanks to Jane Osborn for designing an excellent color announcement for the exhibition, and finally, I thank Jobie and Irving Tick, along with Jack, Linda and Ashley Ritter for their generous sponsorship of this exhibition. Thanks to Paul Klein, who gave me an exhibition in Chicago in 2000, where the first version of this piece was shown... Dates for the exhibition are August 21-October 24, 2009
Enjoyed watching the video, Gary. Puts one in a wistful, ruminative sort of mood...
Thanks Dmitry,
Sculpture can affect mood sometimes, much like architectural spaces...something I am very sensitive to.
Love it, Gary!