Laconia Gallery

An exhibition of new video work from SMFA Advanced Video students

Laconia Gallery announces Arriba y Vite, an exhibition of new video work from School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston advanced video students.

Exhibiting artists include:
Brandon Andrew
Pierre-Yves Boisrame
Shane Butler
Jess Camacho
Daniel Cevallos
Ian Colon
Robert Goss-Kennedy
Meridith Hillbrand
Shen Shen Luo
Ashley Nightingale
Samantha Ponte
Jamie Southworth
David Tillman Tucker.

Led by their instructor Mary Ellen Strom, the group has come together to represent an enduring yet intensified cultural conscience that desires both the contemplative observer as well as the will to actualize change.

Their work shares concerns for social engagement, cultural criticality, and an exploration of urban subjectivity and landscape. Video installations have been produced using multi-channel high definition projections, interactive computer controlled systems and works that explore volume, light and space with simplicity and clarity. Visually stunning and technically challenging, this new work makes a bold contribution to the vibrant video scene in Boston.

Works include:

Mariah Carey, 2008, by Jess Comocho
video projection with three-channel sound
In Mariah Carey the viewer is allured by the vision of an endless stream of pink glitter, falling and rising, mimicking the cyclical nature of desire. Three isolated and spacialized channels of audio present three disparate viewing experiences of the single projected moving image.

James Joyce’s Ear Channel, 2008 by Shane Butler and Meredith Hillbrand
high definition video projection
Butler and Hillbrand’s collaborative new work is a video projection that draws on the sublime while questioning the moving image. Shot on location at Robert Smithson’s iconic land-art project, Spiral Jetty the work acts as a meditation on place and time.

Climax, 2008, Ian Colon
single channel video
In Ian Colon’s, Climax performers enact the primal urge for dominance. The participants work to achieve the highest physical position on a constructed podium. This performance video offers the spectator a moving sculpture and an opportunity to observe raw playfulness, aggression and ultimate determination.

Currents, 2008 by Brandon Andrew
site specific Installation in public space with monitors, live feed camera and runway
Andrew sites his new work in the hallway leading into Laconia gallery. Monitors that line and face the wall are fed by a live camera attached to the ceiling. As viewers walk or runway through the space their images disrupt the reflection emitted by the televisions, recomposing the light in the space. The viewer becomes the artist.

Systems, 2008, Ashley Nightengale,
single channel video
Nightengale’s new video examines systems and cycles of sexuality and gender roles inside a family structure. Through her deep and delicate investigation we experience the social construction and reversion to primitivism.

Untitled, 2008 by Pierre-Yves Boisrame
single channel video with sound
Boisarme’s quiet and carefully observed study of the urban landscape revisits ideas of retinal persistence.

Lot, 2008 by Shane Butler
video projection
Butler questions ideas of the “natural” by activating abandoned urban property through performance interventions.

Red and Green, 2008, by Shen Shen Luo
multi-channel installation
Red and Green uses color and space to study psychological states.

Observing an Observer, 2008, by James Southworth
interactive video installation
James Southworth positions the viewer in a virtual urban space. This interactive experience affords the spectator an opportunity to both observe the location and examine the self.

Norte, 2008 by Daniel Cevallos
two-channel video on monitors with sculpture
Daniel Cevallos animation portrays a solitary figure walking a relentless circular pattern in an urban landscape. One monitor pictures the figure from the front, the other mirrors the figure from behind. Time, place and identity is rendered ambiguous and fluid. The figure (or the video) is in search of physicality.

Look, 2008, Samantha Ponte
two channel video projection
LOOK is an exploration of virtual architectural space and physical volume in relationship to the scale of the human body.