GREYLOCK ARTS - ADAMS (MA)

26 FEBRUARY - 2 APRIL 2010

Arrested Time
An exhibition of works combining contemporary technologies with traditional drawing and printmaking methods

Curated by Jo-Anne Green
Opening reception Friday, February 26th 2010, 5:30 - 8:30 pm

Nathaniel Stern’s Given Time (http://nathanielstern.com/2010/given-time/) simultaneously activates and performs two permanently logged-in Second Life avatars, each forever and only seen by and through the other.

They hover in mid-air, almost completely still, gazing into one another’s interface. Viewers encounter this networked partnership as a diptych of large-scale (8 feet tall) and facing video projections in a real world gallery, both exhibiting a live view of one avatar, as perceived by the other. To create a visceral aesthetic, these custom-designed and life-sized “bodies” are hand-drawn in subtly animated graphite and charcoal.

The audience is invited to physically walk between them; they’re able to hear and see them breathing, witness their hair blowing in the wind, pick up faint sounds such as rushing water or birds crying out from the surrounding simulated environment. Here, an intimate exchange between dual, virtual bodies is transformed into a public meditation on human relationships, bodily
mortality, and time’s inevitable flow.

In Distill Life (http://nathanielstern.com/2010/passing-between/), Stern and Meuninck-Ganger approach both old and new media as form. They permanently mount translucent prints and drawings directly on top of video screens, creating moving images on paper.

They incorporate technologies and aesthetics from traditional printmaking - including woodblock, silk screen, etching, lithography, photogravure etc - with the technologies and aesthetics of contemporary digital, video and networked art, to explore images as multidimensional.

Their juxtaposition of anachronistic and disparate methods, materials and content - print and video, paper and electronics, real and virtual - enables novel approaches to understanding each. The artists work with subject matter ranging from historical portraiture to current events, from artificial landscapes to socially awkward moments.

With Arrested Time (http://greylockarts.net/arrested-time), Green curates an exhibition of Stern’s solo and collaborative work that explores the juxtaposition of old and new media, and illuminates the possibilities and limitations of both. The works hover between stasis and motion, texture and light, line and pixel, past and present, paper and screen, surface and depth, one artist and another.

http://nathanielstern.com

http://jessicameuninck.com

http://greylockarts.net