Lights. Camera. Stock! Classic cues for the performing arts, but at SAGE Community Arts, these are key ingredients for our upcoming exhibition “Light Spill” by Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder. The New York-based artists have been collaborators since 2000.
Gibson and Recoder bring together the rich traditions of experimental film, particularly its structuralist and materialist strands, and the multimodal sensibility of expanded cinema that emerged in the 1960s, in which the moving image was woven into the labile space of performance, sound and interaction with the public. Their larger work explores this interstice between avant-garde film practice and the incorporation of moving images and temporal media into the art gallery.
In 2019, SAGE had the great pleasure of hosting the fantastic duo as part of Jentel Presents while the artists were in residence at Jentel Artist Residency. The process and story of how Gibson and Recoder worked together and in the gallery or museum space for the installation really struck a chord with SAGE. One of the most striking pieces from their collection of installations was “Light Spill” – the namesake of the upcoming show.
In an artist statement from Gibson and Recoder, they share their methods and concepts: “In our installation work, we use projected light to articulate space and time. Cinema projectors and celluloid are the material basis of our constructions in shadow and light, the elementary properties of cinema. These things are deeply imbued with a history of spectators in the darkness of the theater. To bring it out of darkness is to flood this history and throw a certain illumination into it. Some exposure. The light spreads in the displacement of the film from its native darkness in closed rooms (camera obscura) to the strange opening and the unfamiliar illumination of the installation. We explore the discrepancy, elaborate the displacement, recast the luminous mechanics of a strange distance from the medium. The art of cinema, yes. But more appropriate: the becoming cinema of art. This is the upcoming attraction for us.
The distinct and modern installation exhibition of ‘Light Spill’ highlights some of the steps SAGE Community Arts will take to expand viewing opportunities within the exhibition gallery. Offering exhibits that show the traditional and highly respected to diverse collections from national juried exhibitions to modern and progressive exhibits, SAGE Gallery provides a venue for the community to view the broad spectrum of visual arts.
“Light Spill” will open to the public on September 13 and will remain on display until October 15. Gibson and Recoder will give an artist talk on September 14 and the welcome reception will follow on September 15.
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