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SCAD-Lacoste summer exhibition pays homage to the Provencal landscape July 6-Aug 28
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7/6/2007 “Afterglow” features work of Ghada Amer, Patrick Blanc, Maja Godlewska, Hervé Half, Ju-Yeon Kim, Alfredo Jaar and Bill Viola
LACOSTE, France — The Savannah College of Art and Design-Lacoste presents “Afterglow,” an exploration of light as an aesthetic, material, conceptual and poetic phenomenon by artists Ghada Amer, Patrick Blanc, Maja Godlewska, Hervé Half, Alfredo Jaar, Ju-Yeon Kim and Bill Viola July 6–Aug. 28. The exhibition seeks to provide an atmospheric experience with installations throughout the SCAD-Lacoste campus including in the main gallery, Galerie Pfriem, located at Rue du Four. All exhibition spaces are free and open to the public Monday-Sunday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m. “Afterglow” pays homage to a history of art that has responded to the sun-drenched, panoramic vistas of the Provençal landscape by showing an array of work that considers light in contemporary terms. It reveals the manifold and nuanced ways that artists sense, articulate and experience light. Some of the pieces seek to connect with viewers on a visceral level, engulfing their faculties and stimulating their sensibilities, while in others, the artist’s use of light emphasizes the linguistic and cultural distances between the viewer and the work. Ghada Amer’s “Love Park” (1997) is installed throughout numerous terraces and gardens in Lacoste and invites lovers to sit and bathe in the sunlight. Yet Amer’s ‘park for lovers’ is full of irony as the potential for intimacy and pleasure is thwarted by her construction of ‘anti-love’ seats: seats that are conjoined but face opposite directions. The ‘lovers,’ who are unable to see, share or experience the same view, are also presented with their own signposts, each of which quotes anonymous writers’ observations on love and communicates a different message. The seats and signs present an open-ended subtext concerning passivity and the contradictory nature of love. Overlooking the spectacular Luberon valley, “Love Park” invites participants to experience a breathtaking view while reflecting upon affection and its inevitable disillusionment. Patrick Blanc, the internationally renowned French botanist known for his ‘vertical gardens,’ has been commissioned by SCAD to produce his first permanent, site-specific sculpture. Blanc’s grand, yet delicate, spiral sculpture is covered in perennial plants that are biologically diverse and require minimal water. For the “Green Vortex,” the hot, Provençal sunlight is the very source of its existence. Here the vortex becomes a metaphor for dynamism and a concentration of vitality — as it transforms sunlight into energy, the sculpture becomes an image of sustenance and life itself. Maja Godlewska’s work uses light to explore ephemeral vision and the tension between formlessness and form. Her “Templates of Clouds” series, consisting of 20 painted polyester mesh banners installed on the Park Terrace, simulates the seeming contradiction between the illusion of the physical and the reality of the weightless in cumulonimbus clouds. Inspired by the ascending motion and decaying beauty of Rococo and Baroque frescoes in Poland, Godlewska’s “Templates” refract sunlight, simultaneously illuminating and erasing its forms. Viewers immerse themselves in this environment, through which they glimpse the shimmering panorama in the distance. A new series of banners, installed in clusters as geographical markers through the streets of Lacoste, correspondingly transform according to the presence, direction, and force of sunlight and wind. Hervé Half’s densely layered and light-infused paintings are products of an aggressive technique, which, like Godlewska’s work, concerns processes of creative destruction. Beginning with a representational composition, often of landscapes, in paint and varnish, he obscures the image by burning it with a welding torch, then seeks to retrieve the original form by stripping, rubbing or blasting with a water-jet. In the “Fusion” series, this process is applied to create rich, incandescent gold surfaces, which radiate and shine like the rays of the sun. Critically acclaimed Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar frequently uses light as a means to query the human ability to be moved by images. In his own words, he makes light for “communities that lack images,” seeking to bring to mind reflection and contemplation upon universal themes of social injustice. In “Epilogue” (1998), a projected video installation, a brilliant light slowly reveals a portrait of an elderly Rwandan refugee, whose image subsequently withdraws and returns to luminescence. Jaar carefully illuminates the room, bathing the viewers with light to create a poetic and compassionate meditation on the power of images to survive and become a source of historical and personal memory. Ju-Yeon Kim, an artist-in-residence at SCAD, is concerned with how Eastern and Western philosophies of art and life function side by side. Kim’s paintings and drawings use multilayered fragments of figurative forms in landscapes to demonstrate how tangible experience is ambiguous and meaning never fixed. Central to this inquiry is her use of white — that which reflects all color. Kim is interested in the contradictory perception of white in different cultural contexts: In her native Korea, white can symbolize fragility and death, but, paradoxically, in the Western context, it evokes purity and simplicity. Additionally, an installation fills one of the Olivier caves, floor to ceiling, with delicate white paper flowers, while petals circulate through the interior of the space. This ‘whiteout’ engulfs the viewer, giving rise to a visually and physically distorting experience that seeks to “bridge reality and the unknown.” Internationally recognized for his work in video and sound installation, Bill Viola describes video as treating “light like water.” Inspired by Buddhist notions of “pure seeing,” Viola frequently uses light as a means of concentrating vision to stimulate a subtle shift in consciousness. “Old Oak (Study)” (2005) is from a video series originally made for a production of Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde,” directed by Peter Sellers, which premiered in April 2005 at the Paris Opera. Viola translates the story of two doomed lovers into a universal evocation of love and loss. “Old Oak (Study)” is a time-lapse video of a California oak tree on a hillside. The video condenses the changes in light from night to day over several 24-hour periods into a seamless study of the subtleties of illumination. As in many of Viola’s pieces, light becomes the source of a meditative experience through which the viewer considers the divine and the universal paradox of endless cycles of life. Through a series of public, site-specific and gallery installations by invited artists, SCAD’s summer show in Lacoste considers the ambient and emotive qualities of light. The show features both commissioned and selected existing pieces, and addresses the village holistically by engaging with its intricate spaces. The exposure to multiple light sources creates a warm “Afterglow,” or enduring impression, that will linger with viewers long after the creations have been experienced.
View recent Past Exhibitions
SCAD hosts annual Georgia High School Drawing Competition - 1/5/2008
Gallery Hop features emerging Korean artists, photography - 11/9/2007 ‘Inside Outside’ highlights married artists’ different styles - 10/11/2007 |
