The
current exhibition at SUNY Brockport’s Tower Fine Arts Gallery, Illuminating Developments: Images, Objects,
and the Use of Light, features the work of seven artists who rely on light
as a physical part of the existence of their art.
Light,
of course — its presence or absence — has played a significant role in both
contemporary art practice and visual technology as well as in the history of
visual culture in general. Ocular vision depends on light. What we see is
literally right there in front of us, in our field of vision, because of some
form of light. This light may be natural or it can be from one of a myriad of
illuminating technologies that brings us out of the darkness.
Western
culture has always put its faith in the metaphor of light with regard to
knowledge, reason, and truth. For example, you could argue that the
technological processes of photography are a direct result of the quest to
reveal “the real.”
Ever
since the Renaissance, art, or more precisely, painting, has been in the
service of our quest for documenting our worldview, and thus is also a way of
certifying our knowledge and ourselves.
Interestingly,
since the invention of photography, painting’s raison d’etre has become compromised. Painting and what we call
“modern” art are no longer tools that bring forth a picture of our collective
reality. On the contrary, art, as we understand it today, is a tool of
obfuscation, hiding, and ambiguity. Even the photograph in the
post-photographic digital age has become an instrument that blurs “reality” and
focuses on stories and pictures. Then again, perhaps it’s the combination of
story and picture that comprises reality — or at least, a personal reality.
Frank
Menair’s untitled still images from his Project-O-Train are one version. Using a burst of electricity to illuminate a speeding Amtrak
train in the dark of night, Menair projects a series of images and then
photographs them while they remain visible on the body of the moving train.
Looking a little like some wacky billboard, they are in fact photographic
snippets pertaining to his own life. For Menair, “light, electricity, and
trains operate in predictable directions.” Add to this equation the fact that
his father was a railroad builder and then it becomes clear why trains
constitute a “backdrop of many events” of the “ever-present railroad/memory
system” of life; his life.
Martin
Brief’s Lost is an installation based
on the assumptions that belief systems are “founded on a written text” and that
these “texts are designed to prove that the beliefs contained in them or
associated with them are correct.” Of course, just as literal or figurative
enlightenment may or may not reveal knowledge, a similar conundrum arises when
we start from the other end and try to use book knowledge not only as “proof”
of our intellectual and spiritual enlightenment but also as a form of
self-righteous praise.
To
make his point, Brief suspended from the ceiling two rows of three small
rectangular and rusted metal boxes. Each has a little window, which allows us
to peek inside and ponder the tiny but towering stacks of paper “books.”
Heightening the experience is the slightly uncomfortable viewing angle: You
have to stoop to see and it’s a strain to look upwards toward the light.
In
the end, it seems as if these contemporary, investigative applications
ultimately coalesce around a loose but still palpable thread that weaves a
cautionary tale about life itself.
Illuminating
Developments: Images, Objects and the Use of Light through December 11 at the Tower Fine
Arts Gallery on the SUNY Brockport Campus, 180 Holley Street. Gallery hours:
Monday through Thursday 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Friday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday 1
to 4 p.m. 395-5253
This article appears in Nov 30 – Dec 6, 2005.
