Archive for the ‘Sculpture’ Category
Frederico Diaz’s “Adhesion” Exhibit consisted of four large sculptures, a number of paneled pieces, and a series of I-Mac monitors, as well as one very large lcd-screen, playing videos. All of the works explore the relationship between art and science, specifically, science in the context of nature.
Three of the four sculptures caught my eye first, as they are the closest to the gallery doorway, rather large—3 feet or so wide as well as tall, leap off the wall, and are completely chrome. All four sculptures depicted some sort of liquid, dripping form, turned solid. The fourth sculpture, black as opposed to chrome, formed a column of sorts in the middle of the gallery space. The sculptures did enforce the idea of a literal visualization of nature, and were extremely well crafted, however, I felt as if I had seen similar sculptures before.
The panels, the highlight of the show, are placed around the room, save for the wall with the sculptures. Two of the panels take on very large, stretched, octagonal shapes, whereas the rest are more akin to vertical rectangles. All of them, except for one of the “octagons,” are made up of a deep purplish-black material with white linear markings on it. The left octagonal piece is white with blackish markings on it—the inverse of the other octagonal piece to the right of it. The purplish-black (or white) material is actually a thermosensitive paint/paste, and the white (or black) lines formed are from heat sensors built into circuits placed underneath the paint. The white lines change in width, opacity, and intensity as both the programmed temperature as well as the atmospheric temperature change. These slow, but detailed changes in these linear, tree-like structures easily capture the viewer’s attention and interest, as well as force him/her to visually understand the intricacies of a taken-for-granted natural phenomena.
The monitors, placed off in their own secluded corner of the space, all played the same video, entitled Sakura. The film is a vaux-company’s promotional video in which technology runs the company and humans are the subjects. The film failed to grasp my immediate attention, as it moved at a rather slow pace, and I was extremely captivated by the panel pieces. However, the film did provide a nice ambient soundtrack of the future, complete with downtempo lounge music and robotic bleeps and bloops.
I feel like the video is more powerful if you watch it on your computer rather than in the gallery space. Here it is a la YouTube:
-rgm
Maya Lin’s Three Ways of Looking at Earth consisted of three very large sculpture that took up pretty much the entirety of the room they occupied. Two of the sculptures, Blue Lake Pass and 2×4 Landscape, sat on the floor and were made of sliced wood striations. The third piece, Water Line, was a suspended, net-like, wire structure that mapped the ocean floor. Each piece on its own was seemingly static, however, when grouped together in one room, the three works turned the gallery space into an interactive space in which viewers could walk in-between and around the art—an indoor playground of organic sculpture. Although the sculptures each depicted natural phenomena, they each show a very structured and logical creation, evoking the mathematical and scientific aspect of nature.
The room was overwhelming in a great way. I’d see it again.
-rgm
Me:
Grids & Systems 