NYAB Event - Anne Morgan Spalter "Traffic Circle"

Anne Morgan Spalter "Traffic Circle"

Stephan Stoyanov Gallery

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Stephan Stoyanov/Luxe Gallery presents the inaugural New York City solo show of Anne Morgan Spalter, a new-media pioneer who initiated and taught the first fine arts new media courses at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 1990 and Brown University in 1992. Spalter’s exhibition, Traffic Circle, is a milestone in her two-decade odyssey in integrating art and technology. Spalter draws on centuries of work in the landscape genre but brings a new perspective on the modern landscape.

With works created exclusively for this exhibition, Spalter introduces geometrically patterned video works generated from footage she shoots in traffic, from aerial perches, at airports, and on the highway. Several pieces feature iconic New York City landmarks such as Rockefeller Center. The rhythmically structured compositions isolate or abstract features and motion in the landscape, highlighting the passage of taxis down Fifth Avenue, for example, and the soaring of planes on takeoff. Inspired by her mathematical background and interest in Islamic art, she uses a symmetrical kaleidoscopic framework to bring order to complexity. The kaleidoscopic framework and complexity of detail generated by the computer is reminiscent of some psychedelic art; although Spalter’s work is not related to any substance effects, she does feel that the computer offers a new tool for transcendental visual thinking and, in the case of these landscape works, to disorient the viewer and force a new perspective, both literally and figuratively.

Spalter’s art has explored the concept of the “modern landscape” since first shown publicly at the deCordova Museum in 1992. She draws on her travels and her digital photographic and video database to create still and moving pieces. Works are realized as prints, intimate screen-based works, and large-scale screen and projection works: her work was shown this past summer at Big Screen Plaza’s 30-foot LCD screen in New York City as part of Leaders in Software Art (LISA) and at the RISD Museum of Art’s Open Call Video Art Screening Program.

In the past two years, Spalter’s art has quickly been embraced and collected by museums such as Buffalo’s Albright- Knox Gallery and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, as well as renowned private collections in the U.S., Europe and the Middle East, including those of art connoisseurs Bobbie Foshay and Dick and Pamela Kramlich.

Spalter lectures around the globe about her art work at venues including the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and Harvard University. She has been widely discussed in TV interviews and print publications, ranging from the New York Times to USA Today. This past summer she was featured by Dubai as an artist inspired by the region in July 2011 supplements to the International Herald Tribune (worldwide), The Guardian (UK), Le Figaro (France) and Suddeutsche Zeitung (Germany).

With a triple major B.A. from Brown University (Mathematics, Visual Art and Independent Studies) and an M.F.A. in Painting from RISD, Spalter is also the author of the text The Computer in the Visual Arts, used at schools from Harvard University to Pratt Institute. Roger Mandle, current Director of the Qatar Museums Authority and former President of RISD, described this book as “a seductively articulate and illuminating introduction to the rapidly expanding world of the computer and art, design, and animation.” The book has been required, referenced and cited in hundreds of art and design classes and books on digital art, new media and art history.

In 2008, after a decade of contributions to digital and visual computing as Artist-in-Residence at the world-renowned Brown University Computer Graphics Research Group, Spalter left to pursue full-time art creation. While at Brown she worked with or was advised by many computer science and humanities luminaries, including Andy van Dam, a computer graphics pioneer and cofounder of SIGGRAPH, and Alvy Ray Smith, cofounder of Pixar and NYIT. She has been on numerous committees devoted to the digital arts ranging from SIGGRAPH’s Lifetime Achievement Award to the Digital Art Museum’s Advisory Board.