DATE - DATE, 1996
Light is a seductive and reflective medium. We are drawn to it like insects. Light enables us to perceive the world around us. Its qualities and colors influence our experience and the memories we have of time and place. Light is thereby infused with unconscious meaning and inspires associations that we carry with us to each new experience. Luminous Bodies brings together work in various media by the following nine contemporary Brooklyn-affiliated artists that use light as a medium or tool: Pamela Jennings, Samm Kunce, Siobhan Liddell, Mathew McCaslin, Ron Rocco, Martha Rosler, Jessica Stockholder, and Fred Tomaselli. In this exhibition we find light in the glow of a video monitor or computer screen; light as the emission of an incandescent bulb; light as the basis for photo-reproduction and the basic ingredient in photosynthesis; and reflected light as painterly expression. This exhibition incorporates work that cannot easily be categorized by medium. These works allow for a rethinking of traditional categories of artistic expression. Luminous Bodies also seeks to redress a tendency in contemporary art exhibition to segregate, rather than integrate, video and multi-media works from other non-media-based artworks in a gallery showing.
Dara Meyers-Kingsley is an independent curator with an expertise in the media arts and the Director of the Film and Video Collections for The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.