Raphaele Shirley “12.6 Lyrae”

The Chimney

This event has ended.

Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges
and the infinity in which he is engulfed.
Blaise Pascal, Pensées (1670)

The Chimney presents 12.6 Lyrae by French American artist Raphaele Shirley. In an immersive light and sound installation, viewers step into a sensorial and dusky environment. Shirley’s work engages contemplations on the concept of ‘totality’ whether it be in art, religion or science and the idea of purity within emptiness. Her reflection on space in this installation is emphasized through the term “Lyrae”, invoking the instrument and the constellation in which shines Vega, one of the most luminous stars in the night sky.

Installed 20ft from the ground, the central work of the exhibition 12.6 Black Star is a circular neon light that emerges from The Chimney’s ceiling and inclines towards the ground to engulf the visitors in a crepuscular landscape.

The exhibition is sustained in a perennial flow, a living structure with the piece Halo Companion, a sound composed by Algis Kizys, responding to the geometry of the space and the light variations of the neon. An architectural mise-en-abyme, a 1 to 1 scale sculpture of The Chimney itself plays with viewers’ spatial disruption and puzzlement.

Between dawn and dusk, time oscillates amidst infinite spaces. With the gallery’s constant metamorphosis, 12.6 Lyrae becomes both a eulogy to light and an exploration of space and time through sound. The spectral audio piece occupies unknown dimensions and the breathing light object accompanied by an atmospheric fog creates a genesis of sensation. Following a similar rhythm, the choreography of sound and light behave in a unifying stance.

How may one achieve a corporal experience of the infinitely immense? What is our relation to the invisible? How may one perceive the void as an absolute fullness and wholeness? Shirley merges differing representations of cosmology generated throughout the ages in both Eastern and Western traditions filtered through the language of post minimal and process based art. 12.6 Lyrae is a phenomenological invitation in which our own physicality is challenged, where the architecture mutates and space materializes with aerial phenomena.
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RAPHAELE SHIRLEY (Wisconsin, USA) completed her Bachelor Degree at L’ecole des Beaux Arts d’Aix-en-Provence, France and a 5 year apprenticeship in New York city with artist Nam June Paik. She is currently in residence for the year 2016 with her collaborative project 3by3by3 at HarvestWorks in New York.

Shirley’s solo exhibitions include: 0910 Light Shots, Chelsea Art Museum , New York (2010); Arctic Lights, Dorfman Projects, New York (2010); Jewels of Kvinesdal, Kvinesdal, Norway (2009; Sunken City, Marc de Puechredon Gallery, Basel, Switzerland(2008); Sunken City Episode II, Emily Harvey Foundation, New York, NY (2008). Shirley’s work was also featured in group exhibitions including: Chance Ecologies, Queens Museum (2016); The Luminous Surface, Salisbury University, Maryland, USA (2015); Magnetic North: Artists of The Arctic Circle, UBS Art Gallery, New York, NY (2014); Sandnes 2160, Museum of Moving Image, New York (2013); Free City, Public At installation for The Flint Public Art Project, Flint, Michigan (2013); [PAM] Cyland Festival, Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia (2009); Drift, National Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia (2008); Video Art in The Age of the Internet, Chelsea Art Museum, New York, NY (2007); Video As Urban Condition, Museum of Modern Art Linz, Linz, Austria (2007).

Selected fairs and biennials include: Art Basel (2006); Scope, New York (2005-2009); Scope, Miami (2005-2009); Docks Art fair/ Lyon (2009); The Dark Fair/Swiss Institute ( 2008); Mykonos Biennale (2015/2013); Erased Walls, Mediations Biennale, Berlin, Germany (2010); 12th International Media Art Biennale WRO 07, National Museum, Wroclaw, Poland (2008); Waterways, Independants 51st Venice Biennale; Venice, Italy (2005).

Raphaele has been the recipient of several grants by the Norwegian Arts Council for commissioned work there. In 2009 and 2010 she was selected to be one of the participants of the residency “ The Arctic Circle” run by the Farm Foundation. She lives and works in New York.

ALGIS KIZYS is a sound artist, composer, musician and director. He has performed with Swans, Foetus/Jim Thirlwell, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Glenn Branca, Of Cabbages And Kings, Lydia Lunch (Retrovirus/Teenage Jesus), Bag People, Problem Dogs, the Termites, amongst others. He has worked with visual artists such as Eve Sussman, Simon Lee and Matthew Barney with Jonathan Bepler. His film credits include Gus Van Sant, Eve Sussman, David Jacobson and Matthew Barney/Jonathan Bepler, with Simon Lee on an interpretation of Ted Hughes’ “Crow the Life and Song of the Crow” entitled “Where Is The Black Beast?”, and sound design/music for Eve Sussman’s “whiteonwhite:algorithmicnoir” which is the permanent collection of the Smithsonian. He is currently involved in several improvisational music projects, the Triangles (an ambient comedy broadcast installation trio), the Hallicrafters (a shortwave radio duet, with Eric Hubel, using live shortwave signals and test equipment to create real time soundscapes), and is constructing a version of Beckett’s “Krapp’s Last Tape” as a film/installation. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.