Lights. Camera. Action! 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 unite the rich traditions of the experimental film, particularly its structuralist and materialist strands, and the multi-modal sensibility of expanded cinema that emerged in the 1960s, in which the moving image was woven into the labile space of performance, sound and audience interaction. Their larger body of work explores this interstice between avant-garde film practice and the incorporation of moving images and time-based media into the art gallery.
In 2019, SAGE had the great pleasure to host 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 within the gallery or museum space for the installation truly 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. Film projectors and celluloid are the material base of our constructions in light and shadow, the elemental properties of cinema. These things are deeply imbued with a history of viewership in the dark of the theater. To remove it from darkness is to flood this history and cast a certain illumination upon it. A certain exposure. Light spills in the shifting of film from its native darkness in enclosed chambers (camera obscura) to the uncanny openness and defamiliarized illumination of installation. We are exploring the shift, elaborating the displacement, recasting the light mechanics of a peculiar estrangement of the medium. The art of cinema, yes. But more timely: the becoming cinema of art. That is the coming attraction for us.”
The distinct and modern installation exhibition of “Light Spill” highlights part of the steps SAGE Community Arts will take to further the viewing opportunities within the Exhibition Gallery. Offering exhibitions that show the traditional and highly respected to the diverse collections of the national juried shows to the modern and progressive exhibitions, the SAGE Gallery offers a place for the community to see the vast spectrum that is the visual arts.
“Light Spill” will open to the public Sept. 13 and will remain on display through Oct. 15. Gibson and Recoder will give an artist talk Sept. 14 and the meet-and-greet reception will follow Sept. 15.
