IN THE GALLERIES
Alyson Shotz: Fluid State Brooklyn-based artist Alyson Shotz will create a new installation of her works for the IMA’s Efroymson Family Entrance Pavilion series that will be on display from May 10, 2012, through January 6, 2013. In response to the site, Shotz will adapt her sculpture Geometry of Light and display it in conjunction with her animation Fluid State and a series of large-scale stills captured from the animation. Alyson Shotz: Fluid State will mark the first time the entrance pavilion will combine multiple artworks by an artist. Shotz creates sculptures and installations that explore the basic elements of the physical world—light, gravity, and space—through the use of commonplace and industrial materials such as piano wire, glass beads, straight pins, and mirrors. Geometry of Light is Shotz’s response to the question: “What would it look like to see light stopped in time?” The work is composed of circular, hand-cut plastic Fresnel lenses (magnifying lenses ridged with concentric circles to focus light), which Shotz has strung on stainless steel wire and interspersed with silvered glass beads. The sitespecific installation will be adapted to the architecture of the Efroymson Family Entrance Pavilion, attaching to the glasspaneled walls with suction cups and extending across the space. Natural light will filter through the lenses at varying angles and color temperatures, allowing the work to take on dramatically different appearances during different times of day.
This exhibition will mark the U.S. premiere of Shotz’s digital animation Fluid State (2011–2012), created in collaboration with animator Todd Akita, with a newly created sound track by composer Simon Fisher Turner. Fluid State transpires over a complete dawn-to-dusk cycle, beginning with a depiction of an undulating ocean of reflective spheres. As bright midday arrives, plumes of silver lines and translucent droplets emerge from the sea and spiral into the sky. Out of this mesmerizing vortex, colorful organic forms appear briefly and fall away. As darkness sets in, the whirling mass of lines resolves into the animation’s opening image, and the process begins again. This strange and beautiful work is a dynamic visualization of Shotz’s ideas about the creation of matter and organic life.
In addition to Geometry of Light and Fluid State, Shotz will display a new series of large-scale stills captured from the animation, which will be printed on graphic film and attached to a series of panels on the walls of the Entrance Pavilion. The sequence of stills from Fluid State will create a kind of time lapse landscape image that wraps around the space.
Support provided by a grant from the Efroymson Family Fund, a fund of Central Indiana Community Foundation.
An artist talk (7–8 pm) and reception (6–7 pm) in celebration of the opening will be held on Thursday, May 10. Above » Alyson Shotz, Geometry of Light, 2011, cut plastic Fresnel lens sheets, silvered glass beads, stainless steel wire, 600 x 359 x 157 in. Photo by Jérémie Souteyrat.
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