Materiality -
Some works of art have the potential to transform and elevate their media in a way that connects with viewers' natural inclinations to touch and sense them. The work in this thematic group of Saint Kate exhibitions is tactile and textural, encouraging viewers to think about their physicality in a way that merely symbolic, representational, or conceptual doesn't.
Originally commissioned for a show at the deCordova Museum entitled Walden Revisited, In the Roaring Garden, (2014) involved the creation of a floating camera obscura, to record a video of the landscape as it was projected upon a 1:5 scale model of Thoreau’s cabin reimagined as an artist studio. In the resulting video, a projected image of the landscape moves slowly over the interior of the one-room cabin illuminating the walls, furniture, and tools within the space. Throughout the 18-minute video, trees, clouds, and sunlight animate these objects as the sun rises and sets creating virtual days and nights. In contrast to the sublime stillness of watching a projected image of the landscape move across the static objects of an artist's studio, In the Roaring Garden (2015) disrupts this illusionistic space by closing the aperture to the outside world and physically rotating the model upside down. The result is an uncanny choreography of furniture sliding up walls while shafts of light periodically illuminate the windowless interior through the narrow cracks between the floor, walls, and ceiling. The entire set, model, props, and rotating armature, float upon a raft on the Hutchinson River in the Bronx, NY. Located at the edge of New York’s northernmost borough whose numerous transportation networks and massive public housing infrastructure surround this site from three sides, this landscape remains entirely invisible in the video, yet its presence is felt through the drone-like sound of passing cars.
Learn more about the artist in his bio and follow his process on Instagram.
