Turn of the Century by Richard Baim

Richard Baim's Turn of the Century is a projected art work.. The technologies behind this piece have galloped since its inception, and Baim hangs on to that bronco for the full fifteen and a half minutes.

 There are 456 images--layered, multilayered, exponentially layered--a pressure wash for the eyes, for the optic nerve, and for the optical cortex. It requires a lot more than passive observation from the viewer, and if you blink you'll miss cascades of leapfrogging synapses.

The complexity required by this project is enabled by newer computers standing on the shoulders of earlier computers. At the inception of the piece, high resolution digital conversions of grainy black-and-white images recall the gorgeous debris of the industrial revolution. It's as lush as metal objects can be. Eventually this blends with electronic images, in color, from this turn of the century--expelled faster and yet faster. How does this affect the retina (i.e. persistence of vision, after-images)? What does this do to how we form thoughts? Does our mind recognize an image we saw which seems a few thousand images before? Is this work meant to make sense, and is that even possible here? The work never pauses for us to collect our thoughts. It's not chaos, but it never relents.

The sounds accompanying the images--staccato twangs, thwacks, pops and other metallic noises were composed using Midi in multiple layers.  In Turn of the Century, images and sounds seem to touch down on different runways in the brain. The sound does not relate to the images in a synesthetic or illustrative way. But then again, the auditory canal and the optic nerve are anatomically situated at right angles.

Of course, we are experienced with rapid-fire imaging because Madison Avenue is cognizant of visual and auditory pressure washing. However, it is relief to see a work that answers back with philosophical depth and that keeps pace with the bucking, battering nature of the electronic leviathan.

by Sandra Moore

TURN OF THE CENTURY

TURN OF THE CENTURY

Tarnished Nature, Erasable Art by Lydia Rubio

On Sept 16, artist Lydia Rubio held a performance /installation at The Lumberyard in Catskill. She stood by 5 large blackboard panels--2 round, 3 rectangular--which were painted on with permanent white paint and drawn on with erasable white chalk. Each panel was stenciled with a title which, in part, clarified the imagery--"Irreplaceable", "Irreversible", "Impermanent", "Indescribable", "Indelible".  Rubio pointed out that the panels represent our local landscapes--the Hudson River seen from Olana and the Thomas Cole House, The Catskill Creek, the Hudson River bed. This is classical landscape imaged in perspective and rendered in negative (white-on-black)--trees, mountains, rivers, clouds. Gorgeous flora and fauna in these landscapes are pitted against various challenges including financial leviathans--large corporations, trucks on highways, trains and barges carrying oil and other pollutants. Members of the audience are invited to erase the chalk drawings on the panels, and to then to draw in what they would hope to see, such as a cleaner river, the return of the bald eagle, etc. Some painted features were exposed, by erasure, as indelible--e.g.  untrenchable PVC's in the silt of the river--and as these horrors were revealed the audience would audibly sigh. 

The artist noted, as an aside, that some of the boards pass from representational to abstract by the act of erasure; we are left to ponder after the performance, what that might mean. Erasure is not a new technique--Rauchenberg's 1953 erasure of  a DeKooning drawing is still heralded as an enigma. But it's different in this case. Chance figures into the meaning of this fundamentally changing artwork. Like Tibetan butter sculpture, this work is not about making a permanent (i.e. saleable) thing. But the artist does make the point that the panels will be eventually "fixed". Then, these will be radically different artworks. The artist also noted, as an aside, that women artists are commonly erased.

The audience positively supported each of the participants. Rubio kept the mood light enough that it didn't feel like being "called to the board" in school. This ecology lesson on a beautiful Sunday afternoon--all too real and at times alarming--was made tolerable by its relevance, and the good will of the artist and the audience. It cannot be everything we need to understand about how precious and precarious the landscape around us is--but it is a strong reminder and a catalyst to thought.

by Sandra Moore

Art at The Re Institute

The depth and breadth of a group exhibition being held at the RE Institute in Millerton NY belies the received notion that artists must live and work in cramped spaces in cities.. The artists represented are Hong Hong, Brigitta Veradi, Richard Baim, and Peter Fulop.

Hong Hong

Each piece originates as huge sheets of paper, handmade from mulberry bark,  treated with ash, and imbued with dyes. The paper is made in the out-of-doors--in a yard or a parking lot-- on a modular mold measuring 12 x 8’. Each sheet  takes about one day to make.

These huge sheets of paper,  are laid out randomly and shuffled, and may be cut into shapes laid over the larger field. The pieces change with each showing; the paper absorbs humidity, changing size and color, and deteriorates over time. Landscape is not a place in these works, but "intersecting time lines", a way of seeing narrative as a broad vista to navigate. These works could be seen as abstractions, but--- as is the wont of the human brain--shapes and symbols lurk in the paper--maybe snakes, bells, clouds, knives. Or maybe not. The artist states that creation myths inform the work, and are woven into this paper, which has the texture of your grandmother's hands. You must touch it. The artists says that she doesn't think about what she sees when she works, but is searching for a feeling --and when it's found, it's done.

Brigitta Varadi

For the last three year Brigitta Varadi knows Nico and Bart, 2 black sheep who live in Salem NY. Using silk and gauze, she weaves the year's shearings into squares 63 inches on each side, commemorating these lived-lives in pelts, as dark blanket-like hangings, stretched onto wood frames.  As a group, these hangings reveal subtle variations from year to year, related to pregnancy, aging, the changing ecology and weather. You want to touch this slow way of marking time with your hands--maybe even your face.

These hangings are a deep black-brown color,  flecked though with lighter wool, reminding of the work of artists who challenge us with the subtle variations in pauci-chromatic painted fields. But in Varda's work, time softens, and tenderness overcomes theory.

Peter Fulop

Peter Fulop appears to be in the thrall of a love affair with adobe, and we get to benefit. With clay, daub and straw he  shapes a variety of unnecessary objects--which is to say, he makes artworks with adobe. Some of these objects reach toward  a formalist horizon--e.g. adobe discs hung like paintings on the wall, and pigmented adobe domes--whereas some have the offhanded beauty of utilitarian objects--hairy bricks made with hay tossed in a loose pile, not quite soil, but entirely human-- lovely and rude. 

Richard Baim

Richard Baim's mediums are  photography and projection installations. The photographs are conventionally matted and framed, calling-and-responding to the images in the  massive projection installations. At the RE Institute exhibit upstairs, his wall-sized  projection/installation plays in a paroxysmal way, and downstairs a video version of that installation runs throughout the show on a large television screen.  The black and white  photographs hanging in the hall gallery downstairs are double-exposed. One of each exposure is in foveal/sharp focus, the other, overlaid, is entirely or partially out of focus. The result is jarring, reminding  the mind (not the eyes) of dream"perceptions" or remote memories, more than documented experience. 

by Sandra Moore

Hong Hong, Device for Safe Turning, Spell for a Clear Flood

Materials: mulberry bark, repurposed paper, dyes, pollen, dust, water, sun

Nico and Bart