In the Venezuela pavilion of the Venice Biennial, I came across Clemencia Labin’s art video entitled “The Street”.  The interesting thing about this time-lapse type video is that as the pace of the traffic on the street picked up, the speed of the video picked up.  At the beginning of the video, early morning light bathes the scene and a woman walks slowly down the road away from the viewer.  The road slowly contains more people doing different things, until at the end the road is a night scene packed with people.  The video was looped with white in-between that for me, separated one day from the next.  The piece can be viewed on Ms. Labin’s website.

From the fragility of life one expands to the idea of overcoming.  This has different implications and connotations for each individual.  However, a butterfly has survived egg, larvae, caterpillar, cocoon, and now it is in the final life stage as an adult butterfly.  Everyone has struggles and the cocoon can be a dark and lonely place.  It is interesting that while I am in a cocoon–I am painting butterflies.

The butterfly has worked hard through the hardship of fighting out of the cocoon and stretching it’s wings.  It is interesting that compassion is not for us to stretch it’s wings for it (and inadvertently kill it), but for us to let it succeed.  In a way the struggles we face make us stronger.  Do they make us stronger in preparation for the next bigger challenge we face?  Do not take me as implying that we need to ignore our community, neighbors, etc and leave them to their fate!  If the caterpillar crawled away from it’s only food source, then we certainly should put it back where it can feed.

There is beauty and joy in having overcome and survived.

Duccio Trassinelli a professor of Industrial Design, started Studio A.R.D.I.T.I, and began exploring furniture design.  He is particularly interested in lamps, light and the use of low-voltage.  According to The Artistic Time 2, a 2010 collection of the artists and shows at the La Macina di San Cresci, he would define his work as “method, pioneering, technology as poetic resource, no compromises, technical know-how, modern tradition, play, and freedom in space.”  A reflection of these ideas is in the works.  At times, he collaborated with other artists to create works that incorporate inlay-ed wood or art glass.  You can find Trassinelli’s designs at the Pieve di San Cresci, the MoMA in NY, and Center Pompidou Paris among others.

Here I enjoy how the reflectors are placed in a design of beautifully inlaid wood.

Shadow and shape of light break the space around these lamps. The lights in these designs can often be turned and used as directional strong lights as well as reflected soft lights.

One considers how although a file room is something that most people keep hidden,  these pictures expose it.  Unlike the previous photographic series, these images , although connected and building upon the viewer’s knowledge of the physical space and concepts communicated, can also stand alone.  When one walks along each image provides a different space of the room and the images succesively build on one’s knowledge of the place and ideas depicted.  The artist found interesting forms and play of light and shadow in the clutter of the filing room.  The concept of a cluttered filing room has the potential of being referential to the viewer.  Do I have an internal cluttered filing room in my memory?  The inclusion of the window in several of these black and white images both provides a light source and speaks to me of a world that exists outside of this file room.

Ryan Gander from London, England produced the piece pictured above entitled Out of Sight (All on my own).  This piece is located in the Arsenale at Venice Biennial Art 2011.  The figures are reproductions of a Degas ballerina and are juxtaposed (along with the blue cubes and white plinths) to appear as mirror images.

The instillation and title begin reflections concerning isolation and the effect that has on the way we percieve the world around us.   The artist did not create his own figurative  sculptural design, but refers to Degas ballerinas.   It was a particular choice.  Are the two blocks juxtaposed to keep the figure company, or do they trap the her?  Maybe they hide the figure?  Also the figure is kneeling on the ground.  Do we look down upon this compilation or join it on the ground in order to empathize with what is going on?  When one is on their own, are they really alone?   Are their multiple parts to a person?  Does looking into oneself keep someone from percieving the rest of the world that is around one?  Interesting questions arise from ones contemplation of this piece.

One artist whose work caught my eye in the Arsenal at ILLUMInations, the Venice Biennale 2011, was German artist Annette Kelm.

Kelm showed several series of photographs.  The particular one that interested me was entitled Driftwood Lamp, a series of six images of a drift wood lamp on a white background.

If the photographs are read in a western manner from left to right, then we see the ‘lamp’ which becomes a piece of drift wood in our mind, move back, and forth, then down , and up.  These minute changes cause the wood to hover almost as if it was drifting, not falling.  It seems suspended in space as if it was floating.  The lack of shadows in the images take the subject out of our understanding of space and time.  The images become about rhythm and motion.  Although the lamp moves dramatically back and forth, there is a constant among the pictures: the electrical cord that barely shifts from image to image.  This cord gives one a point of reference and the stability heightens one’s awareness of the movement of the object.

About the show

ILLUMInations is the title of the 54th Venice Biennale.  The Biennale is a large conempoarary art exhibit composed of exhibits from artists from all over the world.  The title is poetic in itself expressing both concrete (illuminating poetry and exhibits, structure of exibit separated into nations) and figurative interpretations (wish to inspire different ways of thinking and looking at the world.) The exhibition runs from June 4 through November 27, 2011.  It is open 10am until 6pm on Tuesday through Sunday.  The admission fee was 20 euro (roughly $30).

In a few of my paintings in patterns in flight:  Passion Letter, Malachite Lustre, Wandering Ochre, and one in-progress work.  I play with this translucent idea of light, experimenting with the difference between the effect of the light on one wing that is in-between the light source and the viewer and the other wing that reflects the light falling on it.  This dichotomy of how the light affects my subject interests me on both a technical and theoretical levels.  Technically, it is interesting to experiment with the craft of creating different textures, subtly and simultaneously with creating a fading affect with the wings.  On the other hand, I see potential in relating with a subject that is perceived more fully as the surface and translucency of the matter is conveyed.  While the light is a separate entity from the wing which is molded by it, light merges with the wing that it shines through.

When looking at stained glass we have this same affect.  On the outside of the building, glass is separate from the light and is seen by the light.  When we are inside the building looking at the colored glass, the light appears as a part of the glass.  However, this changes depending on whether you are inside or outside of the building.  With leaves and butterfly wings, you can have both affects in the same scene.

When one is enraptured with beauty, sometimes physical concerns such as warmth are ignored. I soon realized I was quite cold, and scurried back inside to warm up…hopefully there will be more searching later!