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Foxy Production: MICHAEL BELL-SMITH : BOUNCING LIGHTS FOREVER - 10 Jan 2008 to 16 Feb 2008 Current Exhibition |
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Michael, Bell-Smith, Glitter Bend, video loop, dimensions variable
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BOUNCING LIGHTS FOREVER, Michael Bell-Smith's second solo exhibition at Foxy Production, comprises a series of screen-based works that simultaneously establish and dissolve the sense of a digital sublime. Opposing features - flatness and limitless perspective, color and monochromy, motion and stasis, repetition and singularity � coalesce in visual fields that question the image's hold on truth. Bell-Smith's new work is very much concerned with contemporary image production, yet it recalls Romanticism's transcendent landscapes and early Modernism's struggles with form and content. Glitter Bend is a digital animation, depicting a cityscape at night, stretched across an arcing horizon, as if viewed from above the earth. The work minimizes landforms and features, leaving a stark, almost symbolic configuration of line, color and motion. Each twinkling light is a "handmade" GIF - a small motion file found everywhere on the Internet - that has been distributed using algorithms that fragment any electronic uniformity. Building Across From Glitter Bend, the reflection of Glitter Bend on the surface of a glass tower, is likewise a combination of still and moving elements that creates a compelling yet refracted whole. The grid of windows imposes a frame on the work that denaturalizes and abstracts one�s grasp of a recognizable landscape, while never completely overpowering the vista�s beauty. The two works together, placed one across from the other in the exhibition, produce an environment that is at once immersive and disorienting. Lighting Affects 1-3 is an animated triptych of light in motion. Depictions of light forms - lasers, fireworks, spotlights, lightning, and streetlamps - are redrawn from TV cartoons and then rendered by hand, frame-by-frame using drawing software, to produce composite moving images. These boldly dynamic elements never develop into a figurative or narrative whole, leaving the viewer in a kind of ontological limbo. In a similar sense, Starfields 1 and 2, a pair of four-screen works that play with the representation of movement through space, detach conventions from their original referents. A vortex-like action - with no destination in sight - is rendered with differing speeds, directions, effects and colors. In both works, Bell-Smith cannily undermines representational traditions, while investing in the visual pleasure they provide. Moving, Endless (Samples) is a series of still color gradations presented on digital screens. Not unlike an electronic Color Field painting, each work displays subtle but emotionally evocative shifts of color. They all incorporate pixelation � the patterning that lies beneath the surface of a digital image - as if subliminally revealing the inner-workings of the construction of an abstract sublime. MICHAEL BELL-SMITH (East Corinth, ME, 1978) lives and works in Philadelphia. He holds a BA in Semiotics from Brown University, Providence, RI. Selected exhibitions include The New Museum, New York (2008); Hirshhorn Museum, DC (2008); Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois (2008); Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2007); MoMA, New York (screening) (2007); Dallas Center for Contemporary Art, TX (2007); The Museum of Fine Arts in Lausanne, Switzerland (screening) (2006); Tate Liverpool, UK (2005). Bell-Smith's work has been featured in The New York Times and Time Out New York, and online at Rhizome.org and Artnet.com. --- MICHAEL BELL-SMITH TALK + SCREENING: FEBRUARY 6, 6:30 PM Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York, presents an artist's talk and screening on Wednesday, February 6, 6:30 pm. Founded in 1971, EAI is the world's leading resource for video art and interactive media. EAI's core program is the international distribution of a major collection of new and historical media works by artists. EAI's activities include a preservation program, viewing access, educational services, online resources, and public programs such as exhibitions and lectures. ELECTRONIC ARTS INTERMIX (EAI) 535 WEST 22 ST. 5TH FLOOR NEW YORK NY 10011 t: 212 337 0680 f: 212 3370679 http://www.eai.org --- |
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