Sarah Mooiweer

Nicholas Chambers
HAA1020
Exhibition Proposal
With repurposed material as a canon, the exhibition will showcase
where contemporary art is now as well as where it is going. Both pieces
are alike in their colors, forms and use of media; specifically material
that is transformed from the functional or the artifact to new art form.
The first piece is by contemporary glass artist, Dale Chihuly. This
material began its revival in the early 1960s when glass production
evolved from factories mass-producing functional pieces to a single
artist in their studio creating unique designs. At these studios the
object becomes a piece of art displaying ingenuity, dedication and
modern concepts of shape and color. These aspects of its artistic form
are recognized before its functionality is even considered, proving
glass as a new art medium and consequently a new chapter in the
history of art.
Dale Chihuly is originally from Washington and began glass art in the
1960s at the first glass program in the country at the University of
Wisconsin. He continued his education in art at the Rhode Island
School of Design. He later established the glass program at RISD and
taught there for more than a decade. He also cofounded the Pilchuck
Glass School in Washington. His pieces are currently in over 200
museum collections and he has shown solo exhibitions at places such
as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Palais du Louvre in Paris,
Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh, and The Tower of David in
Jerusalem. Over the past couple decades his name has become
synonymous with the avant-garde movement in glass, specifically with
the glass blowing method and installation sculpture.
Chihulys piece is called Persian Ceiling and was first exhibited in 2004
at the St. Petersburg, Florida Museum of Fine Arts. It features a jumbled
collection of seemingly random colors and shapes that as a whole
become a fantastical, forest-like ceiling of glass. The ceiling will be lit
from above, hopefully by natural light, which will make the wide range
of colors encompass the room. The piece covers a 12 by 25 foot ceiling
and appears to float about the visitors head as they lie back on one of
the many couches in the room then walk through the hallway of a room
to get to the second piece.
The second artwork is Mark Fingerhuts live video performance. This
piece is meant to display the reimagining of video and images in a

movement called glitch art. Glitch art has been practiced since as early
as the 1960s, but it really only became popular with artists in the early
2000s. The general premise of the movement is creating and
embracing the aesthetic malfunction of images and video. The errors
are achieved either by corrupting digital code or through manipulating
electronic devices. As the practice is usually done live and to music for
full effect, the typical exhibition for this new media art is a single event
when a collective of artists data mosh and circuit bend together.
Mark Fingerhut is originally from Boston, but is now studying for his
BFA at the Pratt Institute with a concentration in interactive art, video
art, game design, and 3d animation. He performs regularly around
Brooklyn in a group called Wolfshirt doing the video effects of their live
audio/visual performance pieces. Fingerhut has exhibited and
performed at venues around New York such as the Dystill Gallery, the
Hadas Gallery, and The Silent Barn. Recently, the artist had his first
solo exhibition called LASERDISC VISIONS at Pratt Institute.
Fingerhuts piece is called Eliminators by Tommi Gweilo, which was
mixed live by triggering clips, and systematically removing I frames
from the video files making them bleed together. On a more basic
level, the computer does not know when one video ends and another
begins which creates a mash-up of clips. This piece will be projected
from the ceiling onto a full wall in the second room of the gallery. With
the lights off, the video will also transform the entire room into colorful
abstraction of reality. Although the artist will not be able to perform the
video live on a regular basis, the benches set up to watch the
previously recorded event and the music in the video will hopefully
give the viewer the same feeling as if they were at a glitch art live
exhibition.
Because of the practical reasoning behind making this a traveling
exhibition, the physical spaces will be somewhat plain and the artist
will not be present to mix the video live. The nature of the pieces can
hopefully lend themselves to the space as the glass ceiling can be
installed even if the room dimensions are different than the works
dimensions and the video can be projected on any size wall.
Due to glass sculpture already receiving recognition in the art world,
Chihulys piece will be in the first room. The piece is somewhat easier
to understand under the umbrella of art which I believe is due to the
obvious skill and technique in designing, creating, moving, and
installing the fragile media into the ceiling. The colors are awesome
and the forms resemble large bowls, flowers, and shells. When piled
together they become one unified piece, which is just a foot or so
above the viewers head. It is impossible not to appreciate this media

as art. Because of its more apparent definition as art, placing this piece
before Fingerhuts will be an easier evolution into a somewhat more
controversial example of contemporary art. Chihulys ceiling will force
the viewer to travel towards the second room where Fingerhuts work is
being projected.
The video piece will most likely be harder to process as a work of art
because of its less obvious dedication in creation and cartoon-like
nature, though the jumbled rainbow of colors produced by data
moshing should have the same effect of awe as the colors in Persian
Ceiling. This connection between the aesthetic collection of colors
seemingly through chaos will be the thread between the pieces visually
and will attempt to display the video as an important step towards the
future of art practices.
With these two specific pieces I hope to educate the visitors about the
transition from current popular contemporary art to the future of art
practices and hopefully expand their sense of creativity of medium.
Proposed Wall Texts

Dale Chihuly
Persian Ceiling
1992

Blown glass
12 X 25
Evolving from his original Persians series that comprised of these
experimental, new forms on pedestals, Persian Ceiling is the climactic
result of Dale Chihulys exploration of form and color. The piece was
first exhibited in 1992 for the opening of the new Seattle Art Museum and has
since been installed at the 2002 Olympics Art Festival and the Victoria and Albert
Museum.
The individual bowls, bottles, and containers are created through one of the many
techniques glass can be transformed to sculpture- glass blowing. This technique
involves blowing air into a blowpipe to inflate molten glass, the only material that
can be blown to create forms. The gaffer, or glassblower, then uses a torch to
manipulate the material into a particular shape.
Chihuly has been creating glass sculpture installations since taking the first ever
glass art program at the University of Wisconsin in the 1960s. Chihuly went on to
win a Fulbright Fellowship in 1968 to study glass blowing techniques in Venice
then cofounded the Pilchuck Glass School in Washington State in 1971. Since
then, Chihuly has become known as the father of the American studio-glass
movement.

http://vimeo.com/66188547
Mark Fingerhut
Eliminators by Tommi Gweilo
2013
Video
04:19
Mark Fingerhut mixed this video live to Tommi Gweilos song
Eliminators by triggering clips, and systematically removing I frames
from the video files making them bleed together. The computer
basically does not know when one video ends and another begins
which creates a mash-up of clips.
This example of the new media art genre is known as glitch art. Glitch
has been practiced since as early as the 1960s, but it has only
become popular with artists in the 2000s. The general premise of the
movement is creating and embracing the aesthetic malfunction of
images and video. Errors are achieved either by corrupting digital
code or through manipulating electronic devices. As the practice is
usually done live and to music for full effect, the typical exhibition for
this new media art is a single event where a collective of artists will
data mosh and circuit bend together.

Fingerhut has been experimenting with glitch since he started pursuing

his Bachelor of Fine Arts at Pratt Institute in 2011. He has since
performed with his audio and visual exhibition group, Wolfshirt, at
various venues and galleries in Brooklyn.