Louisville: Bolder Crossings
New Art at the Intersections of Science, Sustainability, and the Surreal
New art meets new ideas at the forefronts of science, technology, environmentalism, sociology, and more in this exhibition featuring works by five grantees of the New York-based Creative Capital Foundation. Organized in conjunction with Idea Festival 2010, Bolder Crossings explores the multi-media, interdisciplinary nature of art that addresses our evolving roles, rituals, and relationships. The sculptures, videos, and photographs included here illuminate the potential for art to become the infrastructure of innovation, offering not just compelling imagery, but positing real-world questions, and solutions. The exhibition is on view at the Museum Plaza center, 707 West Main Street, Louisville, KY through October 2010.
What does technology tell us about human behavior? George Legrady, professor of Interactive Media at the University of California, Santa Barbara, builds a computational algorithm to create a computer-generated matrix of pairs of eyes that open and close in response to what the surrounding pairs are doing. Sometimes, their movements mimic their neighbors’, and at other times they hesitate, seemingly caught between asserting individuality and following the crowd. Systemically predetermined and unpredictable at once, Blink reveals the mystery of instinctive behavior patterns.
The practice of scientific inquiry within the realm of the surreal characterizes much of the art in Bolder Crossings, especially Jae Rhim Lee’s Infinity Burial Project (2008-present). While a first look at the explanatory video suggests a Surrealist-inspired performance-- a black-clad figure models a fully enveloping body suit decorated with delicate white lines--Lee’s work actually addresses our dually dysfunctional relationships to death and to the natural world—and the scientific and psychological intersections of these issues.
Artist, farmer, and activist at once, Matthew Moore actively engages in raising awareness as he raises crops, demonstrating art’s essential role in addressing the effects of suburban development on the rural landscape. Moore’s Lifecycles films (2009) document produce, from seed to harvest. Photographs of Moore’s family farmland (2004-6) suggest Surrealist visions of exotic crops, but are in fact visual records of the artist’s large-scale earthworks, created by planting fields in the designs of neighborhoods and buildings planned for development.
Brent Green’s Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then (2010 ) is a poignant and imaginative portrait of a marriage, inspired the story of Louisville hardware store clerk Leonard Wood. A domestic maze of Surrealist proportions, Wood made additions to the house for decades, hoping to create a healing machine for his terminally ill wife, Mary. Green, a multi-media artist, rebuilt the house as the set for his full-length film. The resulting project—an homage to the transformative power of both love and art--combines film, installation, and performance, and collapses boundaries between documentary and fiction, biography and fantasy.
Allusions to a wide spectrum of sources is a hallmark of new interdisciplinary art. New York-based Sanford Biggers references popular culture, African-American history, European literature, and Eastern philosophy in his Plexiglas and LED sculptures, Cheshire (2008) and Smirk (2009). The bright colors and blinking lights of these disembodied smile and half-smile suggest carnival signs, while also referencing the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland—from which the title and imagery are drawn. The artist’s work remains ambiguous and provocative at once, equally witty and incisive. Working with video, performance, installation, and sculpture, Biggers samples deftly from multiple mythologies in his illuminating explorations of contemporary identity.
Philosopher, farmer, scientist, performer, programmer, and more, these innovative artists are in, taking and asking questions.
Works included in the exhibition:
George Legrady, Blink, 2006-7. Computer software projection. Courtesy of the artist and Edward Cella Art+Architecture, Los Angeles.
Matthew Moore, Single Family Residence, 11/2003 - 7/2004
, 20 acre field (8.1 hectares)–floorplan image 950’x 450’x10’ (290m x 37m x 3m)
barley. C-print. Collection of Stephen Reily and Emily Bingham, Louisville.
Matthew Moore, Moore Estates 6, 6/2005 – 7/2006
. 35 acres (14.16 hectares)
,sorghum (homes), wheat (roads). Archival pigment print. Courtesy of the artist.
Matthew Moore, Lifecycles, 2009. DVD. Courtesy of the artist.
Sanford Biggers, Cheshire, 2008. Plexiglas, aluminum, LEDs. Courtesy of the artist and Michael Klein Arts, New York.
Sanford Biggers, Smirk, 2009. Plexiglas, aluminum, LEDs. Courtesy of the artist and Michael Klein Arts, New York.
Brent Green, Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then, 2010. DVD, three segments from feature film. Courtesy of the artist and Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York.
Jae Rhim Lee, Scarf, Infinity Burial Suit 2, 2010. Linen, cotton embroidery. Courtesy of the artist.
Jae Rhim Lee, Infinity Mushroom Development, 2010, in progress. Video. Courtesy of the artist.
Jae Rhim Lee, Infinity Burial Project Overview, 2010. Poster. Courtesy of the artist.