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March 5 – April 4, 2009
Imaginalis
Artists: Jeremy Gardiner, Anthony Head, Nick Lambert, Jan Rafdal
Presented by the Project Room for New Media at the
Chelsea Art Museum
Images courtesy of Jeremy Gardiner, Anthony Head, Nick Lambert, Jan Rafdal
Imaginalis is an exciting collaborative exhibition by a European artists’ collective Imaginalis. Bringing together interactive installations alongside multi-media, painting and print work firmly routed in the rich tradition of modern landscape artists, the exhibition is the culmination of a close collaborative partnership between the four artists.
The Jurassic Coast, a UNESCO world heritage site in Dorset, England, is the inspiration for evocative paintings and prints that blur the line between representation and abstraction. Viewing the coast from the land, sea and air layers of color convey sensations, changes in the weather and seasons. The working method behind the pictures, scouring, building accretions of paint, collaging, and sanding down, echo the history of the ninety miles of ancient coastal landscape we see today. Like the geological spectrum of the coast, these images are stratified, creating distinct bands of paint and color in complex layers built up over eons.
Jurassic Light Years further explores the coastline in the context of a dynamic and time-based virtual environment. The installation uses hybrid techniques that combine painting, drawing, satellite data and ambient sound with immersive virtual reality through computer programming. This work features natural systems, such as changing weather, sea and geological erosion, over time. The dynamic qualities of this interactive installation best convey the succession of changing climates and landforms during its 250 million year old history.
By contrast Oculus is an installation that focuses on the human desire to measure and quantify the passing of time to make sense of the eras of change. Taking its form from the rose windows of European medieval cathedrals the jewel colors of the stained glass are projected to create an ethereal animated installation. Oculus subtly captures movement over time, its circular form echoes that of many ancient calendars and clocks. Embedded in the roundels of the window are the signs of the Zodiac, the plan of Stonehenge, the Nebra star-disc, the Aztec calendar, Copernicus's view of the solar system, and at the centre, the great clock at Hampton Court, the royal palace of King Henry the Eighth. The piece connects the beliefs, discoveries and world-view of the cultures that sought to capture time and place and frame it.
www.imaginalis.co.uk
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