In the Gloaming
Over 30 new installations will be on view for the 2003 season including: "In the Gloaming" by guest curator, Koan-Jeff Baysa who has expanded on the Hudson River School of Painting's fascination with the evanescence and immateriality of twilight."In the Gloaming" is Part 3 of our four chapter series entitled "Ignoring Boundaries." Artists include: Cathey Billian, Emma Dewing, Habib Kheradyar, Perry Martin Mamaril, Lisa Mordhorst, Erwin Redl, Nobi S- and Thierry Wasser, Simon Lee, Michael Petri, Leo Villareal, Warren Neidich and Paula Hayes. Opening May 31, viewing through twilight.
"Gloaming" is the Scottish word for twilight, that sacred in-between time of transition between the activity of our daily routine to the quiet of night and rest. In the gloaming, the air stills, birds sound their final calls of the day, and the light often turns golden; we find ourselves introspective as our visual perceptions, attitudes and pace of life shifts. This transitional hypnopompic period is an ideal time to exhibit works that deal with light in the landscape, from subtle works that glow from beyond the crest of a hill, incongruous gleaming works in the countryside, or small works approached from afar as mere glints. Perhaps in effect more definitive than most other landscape art, this show will run for one year's duration and take advantage of the inherent atmospheric changes due to seasonal attributes. The show will look vastly different with a white background and crisp clear winter days than it will during the foggy evenings of the fall. The glowing sculptures will have a surreal quality in the still, darkened landscape, yet during the summer months, with lightning bugs which glow as frenetic beacons at night, the pieces may seem strangely at home. The outdoor works chosen for "in the gloaming" posit light as a tool that shapes ideas and philosophy in contemporary culture by inviting implications of the phenomenon of light in the landscape, with its physiological aspects and perception throughout dusk. Both literal and conceptual works explore a parallel discourse between the perception of the phenomenon of light and its understanding in environmental and cultural terms.
The artists in the exhibition were chosen for their noteworthy works which deal directly or indirectly with the evanescence, immateriality, temporality, and perception of twilight, fittingly for Columbia County, for these issues also intrigued the Hudson River School of Painting. Leo Villareal presents light patterns and images in a dazzling computer-programmed piece that also serves as a beacon for the overall outdoor sculpture exhibit. In contrast, Erwin Redl's work is a 25-foot line of 50 blue LED lights suspended vertically from a high tree in which nature becomes the active counterpoint to the abstract character of the glowing blue line. Visual orientation and disorientation are addressed in Cathey Billian's highly inventive use of appearing and disappearing words and phrases embedded within lenticular glass, elevated in and viewed against the tree canopy and changing sky, and Lisa Mordhorst's brilliant coated tree strategies which collapse the pictorial plane into her vision of a photograph of the scene, radiantly resplendent in the gloaming. Presaging the fall of night are Emma Dewing's metallic iterations of a statuesque lone tree's foreshortened shadow on a sloping substrate, and Perry Mamaril's woven bamboo sculpture sinuously arising from the ground, reflecting the Philippine children's story of a worm that emerges from its cocoon during vespers. Architectural elements are added by Simon Lee's appropriated form housing his projections that alchemically interiorize the changing outdoor evening, and Habib Kheradyar's clear- and reflective-sided polyhedral yurt-like structure, within which he will sing old Iranian tribal lyrics a cappella, tributes to warriors in battle, hunkered down in foxholes at night. The perceptual and physiological changes in vision are addressed by Warren Neidich and Paula Hayes's work directing the crepuscular viewing of groupings of painted minimalist structures along with a painting of a rose: a conversation between the literal and the abstract played out in the body. The changing presence and evanescence of objects with dusk is sumptuously explored in Michael Petry's giant strand of hand-blown gradient-tinted glass pearls hung in the landscape. Nobi S- invests personal ideas of 'end' and 'transformation' in two objects from his country home: his deconstructed picnic table, which he interprets as the end of day taking form, and his bird feeder, ironically filled with scented beads unsuitable for birds, a sentinel for the waning time of day when the birds vacate their songs, while proffering a scent to evoke the dark promise of oncoming night.
"In the Gloaming" is the third exhibition in our series of installations called "Ignoring Boundaries." The Fields, curated by Kathleen Heike Triem and Peter Franck, provides a unique location to view artwork outside of traditional museum or gallery settings. Dedicated to the display of innovative artwork and pushing the limits of traditional notions of sculpture, The Fields is actively committed to seeking out conceptual art objects which surprise and challenge viewers. Paths for viewing the sculpture allow the public to wander from piece to piece through the 50 acres of the over 200 acre Omi campus. The sculptures are installed on diverse terrain, ranging from hilly inclines to rolling farmland, and dense forests. The variety of landscape types available to artists provides an enormous range of contexts in which to work.
The Fields has, to date, mounted stunningly provocative experiments in showing art of unexpected materials and expressions. Our desire for the future of The Fields is to break down the preconceptions of what outdoor art is and to allow us to operate in the widest possible range of expressions and media. In so doing, we feel that the term "sculpture" will be inadequate. Instead, we hope to posit a notion of art in the landscape that includes image making, installation art, design, multi-media and other conceptual explorations.
The goals for The Fields are to promote an active and intellectually charged exploration into the boundaries of contemporary sculpture through an agenda focusing on cultural diversity and artistic expression. On display are works by such well established artists as Donald Lipski, Beverly Pepper and Dennis Oppenhiem, as well as successful young artists such as Mathew McCaslin, Erwin Redl, Jeffrey Tallman and Leo Villareal. We have a well established education program for children, adults and university students.