Richard Sylvarnes “We Came From The Stars”

Synesthesia Space

This event has ended.

Synesthesia Space presents We Came From The Stars, a solo exhibition at the gallery by New York-based artist Richard Sylvarnes. This work consists of eighty photographs and a feature film titled Here Comes Everybody. Using the mediums of photography and video, Sylvarnes explores the underlying question of why we tell stories and how they shape our identity. In an elaborate network of storytelling that weaves together history, mythology, literature, fables, religion, and comic books, Syl- varnes plunges us through 4,000 years of Western civilization presented as a kaleido- scopic dream, or nightmare - depending on the viewer’s interpretation. The photo- graphs were created utilizing a combination of processes using numerous chemical combinations and darkroom strategies; incorporating large doses of Potassium Ferri- cyanide, Sodium Thiosulfate, and Potassium Aluminum Sulfate, then rephotographed for further computer manipulation. The gallery will present twenty nine of the original eighty photographs that comprise the work as a whole. The accompanying film Here Comes Everybody is entirely composed of stills, most of them photographed in the style of nineteenth-century tableaux photography, manipulated through stop-motion animation, flicker, and rotoscoping. The film plays like an early magic lantern show, as if Eadweard Muybridge had gotten his hands on Final Cut Pro. “The most merciful thing in the world,” says an angel-winged child in a scene from the film, “is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.” As Sylvarnes says, “This exhibition chronicles the stories I was told that eventually became a part of who I am and of which I can not escape.”

On opening night there will be a special screening of Here Comes Everybody, along with two short films, Die Nacht Ist Leben and Cupiditas, which will feature live text and musical accompaniment.
Friday September 6, 8:00-10:30
Die Nacht Ist Leben (19 minutes) Cupiditas (12 minutes)
Here Comes Everybody (90 minutes)
During the exhibition there will be a series of related screenings and performances.
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Richard Sylvarnes is an artist that works in the mediums of film, photography, and music. His work has been shown internationally at museums, galleries, clubs, perfor- mance spaces and cinemas. His first feature film, “The Cloud Of Unknowing”, pre- miered in the International Dramatic Feature Competition at the inaugural Tribeca Film Festival in 2002 continuing on in festivals throughout Asia and Europe and was released by Possible Films in 2004. “Here Comes Everybody”, his second feature, also premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in the NYNY Narrative Competition in 2006. His third fea- ture, “The Last Words of Dutch Schultz”, is a found-footage film that featured live music accompaniment premiering at The Microscope Gallery in New York City and then at the Anthology Film Archives. In 2009 he received a Creative Capital Grant to work with the four-time Bessie Award winning choreographer David Neumann on a work titled “Big Eater” that premiered at the Kitchen in 2010. In 2008, he was nominated for a Rockefel- ler Renew Media Fellowship. Richard has released music through the Skrymir Label and 3D Media under various monikers and bands including “Zero Times Everything”, the “Underworld Oscillator Corporation”, “Sylvarluxe”, and Berlin based “KaiSaR”; and is a member of the expanded cinema collective “Optipus”. He holds a Bachelors Degree in Photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology and has studied film making at New York University, music at Berklee College of Music, guitar with Robert Fripp, and art at the School of Visual Arts. He has been a guest Lecturer at Harvard University and he presently serves as Vice President on the Board of Directors for the Film-Makers’ Cooperative.