Blink! Brings Electronic Media to the Forefront
While browsing through the Denver Art Museums acquisitions, curator, Jill Desmond, came to the realization that works utilizing electronic media lacked categorization. During the last twenty five years the DAM had amassed video, sculpture, animation, and installations incorporating electronic media, yet these works had never before been brought together. Thus the impetus for Blink! Light, Sound, and the Moving Image, the newest exhibit at the Denver Art Museum, was born. Jill and her team were not only challenged with the technical aspects of bringing so many divergent pieces together, but also discovering a unifying theme to the works. What was found was a consistent human element ermerging through the technologies. Thus, Blink! not only highlights the wide array of array of art utilizing electronic media, but also reflects our relationship with these increasingly rapid evolving technologies.
Looker II by Alan Rath
While a broad range of human emotions can be seen throughout the exhibit, humor and playfullness seems to surface more frequently than others. This attitude becomes immediately apparant as you enter the exhibit space and see a Pixar-esque animation of a fish singing a cabaret style tune in Mark Weinstein's piece, Three Love Songs. Chritian Marclay's piece is equally playful, recontextualizing film and television clips to to comic effect. Vuc Cosic takes a reverse approach, recreating the shower scene from Pyscho using binary code. Still, serious themes present themselves such as in Maria Friburg's Endless Limit. Issues of identity, and especially sexual identity come to play as we look up to the ceiling to see a the movements of a dancer's feet whose identity escapes us. Perhaps the highlight of the show is Charles Sandison's Chamer. First created as a sight specific piece during the DAM's Embrace exhibit, the work utilizes ten projectors to create an immersive environment in one of the museum's most creatively designed rooms. Bits of computer code stream across the angular wallls to create movement reminiscent of biological circulatory or lymbic systems.
Zero by Tony Oursler
Blink! also has an interactive room where the animation pieces are on display. Highlights included Stacy Steer's collage based animation Phantom Canyon as well as Michael Burton's additive canvas based animation, Frequency. Both the final canvas from the animation and some of Steers' collages are also on display.
Blink! reminds us that the technologies surrounding all aspects of our lives are not only limited to the way we communicate or entertain ourselves, but also the way we create. With the rate of technological evolution, perhaps a new Blink! show will be in order in five years, as opposed to the twenty five years it took the DAM to collect these fascinating works.
Self-Portrait by Edward R. Lowe
Photographs by Janelle Pietrzak
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