Gibson + Recoder: Articulating the Material Substance of Light

Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder (Gibson + Recoder) have been collaborating since 2000, producing numerous expanded cinema installations and performances that go beyond the category of moving image to incorporate the visual, mechanical and conceptual qualities of film projection.

“The art of projection is an area we’ve been working in for 15 years creating ways of articulating the material substance of light,” says Recoder. “In the same way a sculptor might work with a material they chisel away at, we find ways of carving, subtracting and adding light.”

Gibson + Recoder produce both performance and installation work. When performing, they are sometimes in front of an audience, while at other times they are in the projection booth each operating a projector. They will work in tandem with traditional film, experimental film and sometimes no film, just light. They come equipped with glass, colored filters and a humidifier that produces vapor. As the projector rolls, they each interact with the projected light creating a cinematic progression of light and color that is accompanied by sound produced by a collaborator.

While they were in residence at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA), Gibson + Recoder set up a number of camera obscura situations in two large studios. The pieces on view during VCCA’s Open Studios were beautiful, fragile and mysterious. In these works, Gibson + Recoder are co-opting a naturally occurring scientific phenomenon, but they’re doing it in such an interesting way, making us think about light—its fragility and power and also about perception itself. Yes, we are looking at reality, but because of the nature of optics, it’s upside down. The light/image is further altered depending on aperture size and where it’s directed. Gibson + Recoder use wrinkled and torn paper and supermarket plastic bags blown about by electric fans to add texture and movement. These various techniques transform the image into something blurred and fleeting, quite separate from the outside world it’s capturing. It’s as if we’re looking at it from a remove of distance or time.

Not all the camera obscura pieces featured recognizable images. One piece used filters so the image was abstracted and the work became more a study of colored light and shadow. Another used a revolving glass vase as a lens to bend and warp the light creating dynamic projected reflections. “We’re moving away from the obvious camera obscura ‘how’s it done’ mechanical thing,” says Recoder. “People tend to get hung up on trying to figure out what it is. We want to put layers in front of that so people can experience it first and then ask that question.”

People also tend to associate the camera obscura with photography. “The camera obscura has been hijacked by photography through the use of the pinhole camera,” says Gibson. “We see the camera obscura as micro-cinema, or more precisely, live cinema projection.” When you think about it, this is exactly right because the light that the camera obscura captures recreates an exact image of the living, breathing, moving world.

The camera obscura is a form of found art, since it records what is already there. It’s also low tech–you only need a darkened room and a small opening for light–and ancient, Aristotle makes note of the phenomenon.

I like the way that Gibson + Recoder take something antiquated and overlooked like the camera obscura or film technology with all its interesting retro looking artifacts and somehow made it cutting edge. They’ve done it by taking a completely different approach, highlighting the means (the equipment, the methodology) rather than the end (a precise recreation of the world outside/the moving image) creating thought provoking and beautiful work.

Gibson + Recoder are based in New York and have exhibited and performed internationally at the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA PS1, Mad. Sq. Art, Performa, Light Industry, The Kitchen, Anthology Film Archives, Microscope Gallery, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Hallwalls, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, REDCAT, Ballroom Marfa, Robischon Gallery, Sundance Film Festival, CATE, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Sagamore, Toronto International Film Festival, Images Festival, BFI London Film Festival, Tate Modern, Barbican Art Gallery, ICA, Dundee Contemporary Arts, Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Viennale, Austrian Film Museum, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, HMKV, RIXC, 25FPS, Courtisane, M HKA, STUK, BOZAR, TENT, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Reina Sofia, La Casa Encendida, CCCB, Museu do Chiado, Serralves Foundation, Solar Galeria de Arte Cinemática, Careof/Viafarini DOCVA, Atelier Impopulaire, Morra Foundation, Nam June Paik Art Center, Yokohama Museum of Art, and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art. Gibson + Recoder both have individual works in the permanent collection at the Whitney Museum of American Art that will be on included in the inaugural exhibition at its new location, America is Hard to See (May 1- September 27, 2015).

In 2010 Gibson + Recoder were awarded a commission by Madison Square Park Conservancy in New York to create a public art piece that was exhibited in Spring 2013. Topsy-Turvy: A Camera Obscura Installation was subsequently exhibited the following fall at Brooklyn Bridge Park.

www.gibsonrecoder.com

David Farrar's Ephemeral Moments of Beauty and Comedy

“Ephemeral moments of beauty and comedy influence and guide my practice,” says artist David Farrar. “Lines of light cast through a venetian blind, a toilet roll dancing uninhibitedly in the gentle breeze of an extraction fan, the strong shadow cast from a streetlight illuminating a wooden pallet on the street. I repackage these moments as ethereal worlds isolated from the imperfections and noise of reality so that more people might appreciate the beauty of everyday occurrences.”

In his practice which incorporates printmaking, woodwork, sculpture and installation, Farrar makes use of humble materials and objects, subtly altering them in unexpected and, indeed, quite dysfunctional ways. In a hallway of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA) in Amherst, Virginia where Farrar was recently in residence, he changed the EXIT sign to read EXALT, cleverly maintaining the font and utilitarian position, high on the wall, so it takes awhile to notice it. When you do, it’s hard not to smile. “I enjoy installing these pieces in ways that could be overlooked at first glance, and seeing the viewer’s moment of realization,” he says.

Farrar was drawn to the Exit sign as an oddity. In the UK, where he’s from, exits are marked with the symbol of the running man. It’s in keeping with his practice of working with what’s around him. Whether he does this using things like soil or tree bark as media, or in the creation of, often loaded, facsimiles of objects, sometimes reproducing them in miniature, other times they’re perfect, though functionless, replicas.

While commonplace for Americans, heating vents are also unfamiliar objects for Farrar (central heating is rare in the UK). His introduction to them occurred at the Artist House residency program, St. Mary's College, Maryland where he was prior to VCCA. Puzzled that the paper models he left on his desk at night would be scattered on the floor when he woke, he soon realized the culprit was the forced air that came on while he slept.

David’s interested in the relationship between form and function,“ particularly the point at which an object loses its functionality,” he says. “For instance, the same object found on the street functions in a wholly different manner than when it is in a dining room. Broken and discarded objects are imbued with a sense of pathos that stems from their loss of functionality and dislocation from their original environment. I reinterpret these objects within an artistic framework, raising them up as art objects by giving them new forms and functions. In this transformation, I often physically break down these objects to their raw materials in order to reconstruct them using traditional methods such as printmaking and woodwork. I see this process as a form of preservation: if these objects were left to break down naturally they would be lost forever. So, instead, I give them a new lease on life and purpose.”

Taking the scavenged furniture, Farrar photographs it, then breaks it down, burning the wood. Reducing the resulting charcoal to a fine ash, he uses this together with the original photograph to make a screen-printed image. It’s a wonderful rift on form and function that only gets better when you take into account silk screen terminology: you “burn” the image onto a screen using a thin layer of UV sensitive paint and a strong UV light. This, of course, references the burning of the original object; the residue or palimpsest often left behind after cleaning off a screen is called a “ghost image", which relates in some way as the image is a ghost of the no longer extant chair.

Lack of functionality also plays into his true-to-life 2-D templates of a glue stick and pair of scissors. The trick with these is you need actual glue and scissors to create their 3-D versions from the templates.

Shipping pallets figure largely in Farrar’s work. “I like their form, the fact that they are these very functional objects with this one purpose and they haven’t been superseded by something high tech.” He’s worked with large ones before, but there is something so appealing about his miniature versions. Some he paints, others he covers in material: velvet to exalt the mundane pallet and fake grass, which suggests that nature is reclaiming the pallet, but then again, it’s artificial grass. “I make scale models out of cardboard and balsa wood so they retain their formal quality but lose their functionality; after all a balsa wood pallet is about as much use as a chocolate teapot. These works also act as visual puns that reference, and perhaps make slight fun of, the overly serious monochrome canvases of minimalism: a monochrome palette for a monochrome pallet.”  

Farrar also makes miniature versions of the quite beautiful skeletal “houses” that are sometimes used in historic settlements to give visitors the idea of the structure of a building. “I noticed these striking forms on the landscape when I first arrived to St. Mary’s and was intrigued to learn that they are known as “ghost houses”, which is an apt description as they are wooden skeletons built on the footprint of the past and left to degrade naturally over time.”

Paper plate lithography is an experimental technique that exploits the chemical reaction between gum arabic and Xerox toner. Toner resists the gum arabic and paper absorbs it. When you put oil-based ink down, the toner attracts while the paper resists. For these lithographs, Farrar used ink he made with Mt. San Angelo soil. The process doesn’t require a lot of equipment. Basically, all you need is a Xerox machine. It’s transient, you can only use each plate once, and the image breaks down fairly easily so there’s a painterly quality that corresponds nicely to the clarity of the Xerox.

Farrar likes taking humdrum things and presenting them as art citing the Arte Povera movement as a major influence. Much of his work is either very fragile or not archival. “I like the delicate nature of things, they’re fleeting objects that only exist for a limited time. I don’t want to be perceived as too serious,” he says. “I like the fact people pick up on the humor in the work.”

One can marvel at his inventiveness and the labor involved in creating some of these pieces. It takes real passion, not to mention self-confidence to scan an entire roll of paper towels and then digitally print a version of it, but as Farrar says, “This is the work I want to do; I maintain truth to the original idea. I persevere.”

On his return to the UK, Farrar who is from Oxford, will continue to live and work in Glasgow returning to his post as a printing technician at the Glasgow School of Art where he studied. He will also be exhibiting work made during these residencies (St. Mary's College, Maryland and VCCA) in Glasgow Open House Festival, (Glasgow) and Hidden Door Festival, (Edinburgh).

Aaron Johnson's Reverse Painted Acrylic Polymer Peel Paintings

There’s a whole lot going on in Aaron Johnson’s paintings. They’re visually rich with vibrant colors, densely packed compositions and a profoundly macabre subject matter. Generously larded with potent political and societal themes, the work is created through a complicated technique Aaron refers to as “reverse painted acrylic polymer peel painting.”

In the multi-step process, Aaron starts with a preliminary drawing. “For the small paintings with their hyper detail it helps for me to plan it all out in advance,” he says. “Narratives come easily when I’m drawing with pencil and paper—letting things come into my mind and having fun with it.” The drawings get messy with all the erasing and smudges of graphite and so he makes a tracing of them that he tapes to the front of the polyethylene plastic sheeting on stretchers he uses as his painting surface. “For the bigger ones, I’ll just draw right onto the plastic because it’s a looser piece.”

Aaron’s paintings have three layers of paint each separated by a layer of acrylic polymer. The acrylic polymer is a clear plastic in liquid form, that’s poured onto the finished layer of paint and left overnight to harden. The layering adds a wonderful sense of rhythm and dimensionality to Aaron’s work.

Painting backwards, Aaron must first put down the detail. Disembodied from the rest of the components making up the form, these floating elements (teeth, eyes, nails, etc.) don’t make much sense to anyone at this point other than the artist. This layer is followed by the under coat of color which completes the figures, and finally the background layer is applied. To grasp how hard this is, you have to understand that from the working side, it’s impossible to tell what the painting looks like, it has to be turned around in order to see its true appearance. So, as he's working, Aaron is constantly thinking ahead to what’s going to happen in the next layers.

“The way I paint is the reverse of how most painters work,” Aaron explains. “They start with broad strokes and start to find forms and then refine and approach details. I start with detail and zoom out. It’s like the details are super precise and controlled and I know what I’m going for. In the beginning, I’m using a tiny brush; it’s painstakingly slow and then as the paintings progress, I’m relinquishing control of this thing I labored on. The backgrounds often involve splatters and poured paint—chance things and a little bit of chaos so I’m not exactly quite sure what the finished work is going to look like from the front anymore.”

After all the paint and acrylic polymer is layered onto the plastic, Aaron transfers the work onto stretched netting. This is done by laying the plastic painting surface flat, plastic side down, and pouring a final coat of polymer and then applying the netting. The polymer saturates the net, congealing all those layers of paint to the net as the polymer dries. When it's dry, the plastic is peeled away.

Aaron began using netting because when he used this multi-layered technique on canvas, it wasn’t porous enough and so he ended up with a lot of air bubbles, He got the idea to use the unconventional material walking past a construction site in New York where he spotted the orange net barricades. Eventually, he found a company in Connecticut that manufactures every kind of netting you could find. Aaron even did a commission for them using all the different kinds of netting they produce. They now send him barrels full of remnants.

Aaron’s characters are inspired by Mexican Day of the Dead figures. There’s plenty of blood and grossness in his work, but it’s handled in such an irreverent and intentionally outlandish way, it comes across as darkly funny rather than truly disturbing. In one, a bizarre feast/operation is depicted. It’s a grotesque comedy featuring a cast of oddball death’s headed characters arranged around a table including a nurse who has cut into the body releasing a toaster with toast flying out and hitting her on the face.

Aaron’s mother grew up in Assam and his childhood house was filled with Indian art. He says the Indian aesthetic is so ingrained in his self-conscious he references it without thinking about it. This explains the ease with which he incorporates the sumptuous palette, marvelously inventive patterns and flame-like gestures that recall Indian miniatures and enliven his paintings. In some works, Aaron makes more direct reference: inserting the elephant foot stool he inherited from his grandfather in one, a Ganesh-like figure in another.

Johnson enjoys putting “little things for people to discover” in his paintings. He uses a lot of food imagery. Often, it’s fast food that he utilizes to critique American capitalist culture. It’s a recurring theme that pops up in his paintings, but he keeps the meaning very open. “I’m not really thinking why the fries and hamburger would be dancing on the piano… it’s just available iconography to me. I wanted something on the tabletop to punctuate the wood grain.” And what wood grain! Wild, yet controlled it’s like an evocative caricature of wood grain. His approach to this one this one element neatly sums up his inventive and elaborate approach to subject and process.

http://www.aaronjohnsonart.com/

Kylie Heidenheimer

Kylie Heidenheimer arrived for her fifth residency at VCCA with work already begun on some of her pieces. “It’s what I like to do, to arrive with something in progress.” This ensures a relatively smooth segue into work without the added weight of a blank canvas staring you down from across the studio. And, as Heidenheimer points out, “You see things differently when you move them around.”

Beginning in 2010, Heidenheimer started working with more amplified color. This initiated a medium change from acrylic to oil, the acrylic colors being too highly-keyed for her taste. It was “an interesting adventure” since she’d been using the medium for 15 years and had to adjust her working methods to accommodate the demands of oil.

But the rich colors and translucent glazes characteristic of oil make it all worth the trouble. Heidenheimer paints on oil paper, canvas on stretched panels and canvas stapled directly to the wall.

It was interesting seeing Heidenheimer’s recent work after looking at a catalog from 2008. Not only was the vibrant color a surprise, but the looseness of her brushwork was markedly different from the more tightly controlled, all-over effect of those earlier paintings.  

With these recent pieces, Heidenheimeris exploring what she refers to as “a twisted space.” You’ll see in her paintings how one side comes forward while the other recedes. Heidenheimer does this as a way to acknowledge both surface and depth. “The painting is both an object and a container for space,” she says.

They’re also beautiful with pairings of color that are interesting and satisfying, and a complex lexicon of marks, that range from daubs to jagged lines to washes. Hue and gesture impart a wonderful drama to her compositions that are, as Heidenheimer says referring to her constant reworking, a few paintings in one.