Richard Torchia "Paradise Pictures"
chashama Window Space (266 W 37th St. )
This event has ended.
By suggesting both a movie studio and what might appear as random, optical phenomena, Paradise Pictures frames the effects of urban tree shadows to explore the tensions between nature and culture that they demonstrate. Harnessing the combination of given conditions—winter weather, heat issuing from inside the exhibition space, and the scaffolding that currently shades the glass storefront of chashama's Window Space, the installation gives the live trees an opportunity to perform. about the installation
The shadows of trees are among the most primitive examples of nature's capacity to create graphic images of itself. Unlike shadows cast by mountains, clouds, or heavenly bodies—which register to us more abstractly—the shadows of windblown trees are capable of impressive but comprehensible scale, dance-like movement, and intimate, detail. Henry David Thoreau, writing in his journal about the "rich tracery" of the shadows of elms he saw in the light of a half moon in 1851, was moved to comment that "men had got so much more than they bargained for, —not only trees to stand in the air, but to checker the ground with their shadows". Torchia is interested the ways in which such shadows, when thrown onto the flat planes of urban walls and streets, not only become more legible but also appear more ephemeral. Whether created by the sun or artificial light sources, when cropped and contextualized by city surfaces, the shadows of moving foliage take on the character of mediated, cinematic projections without losing their delicate and fugitive immediacy.
Media
Schedule
from December 18, 2008 to January 03, 2009
Monday - Friday 9am - 6pm, Saturdays 12noon - 6p. Closed December 25 and January 1.
Opening Reception on 2008-12-18 from 18:00 to 20:00