The Finished Fourfold: Collaboration and Multi-Site Exhibition
This summer from May 20 through June 30, (2015) Christine Soccio, John Spano, and I embarked on a collaborative adventure. If you've been following this project, pardon a bit of redundancy, but if you're stumbling onto this post without context, this should be a pretty comprehensive overview. We decided to take philosopher Martin Heidegger's notion of the interrelated modes of being of the "fourfold" as an impetus for collaboration. Joined by the commonality of light as a frequently used medium, we decided to ply our otherwise very different practices together and see what emerges. This exhibition, Fourfold, at Solo(s) Project House in Newark, NJ was the result!
Fourfold Collaboration
The main attraction, as it were, was an entirely collaborative project, in which we used digital projection, laser cut plexi, acrylic rods, a custom hole cut into a wall, glow in the dark paint, an arduino, and some strategic lighting to compile the 5 layers of an Ammann grid. You can follow this link for a post about the backstory about its conception and installation. Here's the final project:
While the automated shutter is open, text imagery is projected through the plexi grid and through the window onto the back wall within the darkened room, casting reflected and refracted images as well as the viewer's shadow into various places in the gallery (the walls on either side of the window, the side wall, the wall behind the projector, etc)
Then when the shutter closes, turning off the projector, The phosphorescent panels inside the darkened room glow with a photographic memory of the grid imaged, compiled from the 5 distinct layers.
my automated shutter, powered by an Arduino
shutter open...
...shutter closed
view from inside the project
Individual Collaborations
Meanwhile, this main collaborative project sat in the midst of many other pseudo collaborations, in which we individually applied each other's practices to our own, funneling the concepts, materials, and subject matter of each other artist through our own modes of making work.
My projects were the following, a series of drawings and a projection negation installation, each of which you can read more about at the above links. Here are some final images.
Two drawings, one for each venue (for the first portion of the exhibition it was a multi site exhibition... more on that below). Each uses the floor plan of the respective gallery as the basis for mandala like imagery, with a functioning QR code that takes the viewer to a live stream video of that gallery. The charcoal is a nod to John's smoke usage, and the process of erasure (from my own practice) reveals Christine's Ammann Grid.
A little co-mingling between pieces - a collaboration of the cast imagery from "Fourfold" and my drawing
And my projection negation piece
The Threefold Fourfold, in Twofold Fivefold
John's individual works: an analogue projection borrowing from Christine's patterns and my use of stained glass, and a print conflating his hazmat man with Christine's Ammann grid and my QR code imagery
John Spano
John Spano
Christine's pieces, laser cut plexi with light projecting through them, one combining my QR codes with John's hazmat, the other with his Calvin Klein ad usage.
Christine Soccio
Christine Soccio
Christine Soccio
Multi-Site Collaboration
And finally, the last component of the exhibition was its interconnectedness with its sister space in NY, R.Jampol Project(s). We wired up several live streaming video feeds to connect the two venues together virtually, dubbing one wall in the Newark gallery the "Portal to the Lower East Side."
While on view, this "portal" featured live feed of the exhibitions on view in the other space, pictured below is Christine's installation.
a little mid-install live feed
our computer setup to project onto the wall, as well an extra webcam to enable the mobile-friendly live streaming of my QR code mandala drawings
our "portal to the LES" wall
testing out the live feed
Live feed screenshot of Christine's project in NY
After the NY run was through, we converted the projection to a recursive live feed of the Newark gallery, viewed from behind one of Christine's plexi pieces. This way it would view viewers as they view themselves viewing the view of themselves viewing.... and so on... as filter through the colors of the collaborative imagery of her piece.
setting up the camera
positioning it behind Christine's work
And that about wraps up this exhibition. In my next (much briefer, I promise) post, I'll share some photos and videos from the opening and other events, and then I believe we should be all caught up to speed!
A Directory of the other posts about this project:
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