Rafael Lozano-Hemmer "Transition States"

Haunch of Venison

poster for Rafael Lozano-Hemmer "Transition States"

This event has ended.

Haunch of Venison New York presents "Transition States," its first solo exhibition by Mexican-Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. Since his emergence in the 1990s, Lozano-Hemmer has mixed the disparate fields of digital media, robotics, medical science, performance art, and lived experience into interactive artworks. The works in "Transition States" represent an ongoing exploration of these themes, the nexus between corporeality, representation and technology. Upon entering the atrium at Haunch of Venison, visitors are greeted by "Pulse Spiral," a chandelier of incandescent lightbulbs hung at varying heights. Originally premiered at the opening of the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture in Moscow in 2008, the work records the heartbeats of participants, which in turn register in the pulsing of the lightbulbs. Blinking with the vital signs of up to 300 participants, "Pulse Spiral" is a mesmerizing memento mori that visualizes our bodies' electrical rhythms. Other new works seek to question the supposed neutrality of the gallery space by introducing elements of surveillance or by misusing technologies of representation and mapping. In "Reference Flow", EXIT signs are animated by the presence of the viewer, while "Reaction-Diffusion" pictures migration across the Mexico-US border with alarmist red lights controlled by physically accurate equations of fluid dispersion. The digital media installation "Make Out" features video clips of 2400 couples looking at each other: as soon as someone stands in front of them the couples begin to kiss. The massive array of make-out sessions continues as a wave that radiates outwards from the location of the passer-by — as he or she moves away all the kissing ends. The collector or curator can choose what proportion of the videos are man-woman, woman-woman or man-man. Included in the show will be a new video documentary and a functioning prototype of "Voz Alta" the memorial commissioned for the 40th Anniversary of the Tlatelolco student massacre in Mexico City (2008).

Media

Schedule

from September 10, 2009 to October 24, 2009

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    Reviews

    perke: (2009-09-16 at 15:09)

    Lots of fun installations to interact with- touch, speak to, move in front of and see it move. And, another perk is the view from the 20th floor the gallery is on the Rockefeller Center and Midtown.

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