Curated by Elizabeth Keithline
May 4, 2011 — June 5, 2011
Opening Reception Sunday, May 8, 4pm – 5pm
About the Exhibit
A Tool Is A Mirror, an exhibition that asks artists to respond to the sentence “Every keyboard reflects a hand and every screen an eye”, opens at the Danforth Museum of Art on Sunday, May 8 from 3 to 5 pm.
The exhibit features an all star cyber-artist line-up including Aerostatic, Sheila Gallagher, Dennis Hlynsky, Brian Kane, Duncan Laurie, Rupert Nesbitt, and Erik Sanner.
Artist and independent curator Elizabeth Keithline developed A Tool Is A Mirror as a complementary group show to her solo exhibition, Smarter / Faster / Higher, opening at the Danforth Museum, Framingham, MA, on May 4 from 3 to 5. Both shows are part of the Boston Cyberfest and both tackle the issue of technology as a tool of human evolution.
Keithline notes, “I love to work on a solo show and curate a group show at the same time. When you are developing a concept for an exhibit, you’re naturally drawn to others who are working with the same idea. It’s interesting to me to expand the dialogue by involving other artists. In the case of A Tool Is A Mirror, it has put me in touch with some very talented people.”
About the Artists
Aerostatic
Terry Golob, Michelle Darling, VADE (Anton Marini)
Based in Brooklyn, NY, Composer/Performers Terry Golob and Michele Darling (AKA Aerostatic) have been working with music and technology since 2004. Utilizing artifacts of sound generated by digital and analog processing in conjunction with a variety of interactive technologies, they compose a hybrid style of electronic music for films, installations and music performance. Aerostatic’s music has been featured in venues nationally and internationally. Aerostatic’s Music and Sound Design clients include Sesame Street , Moshi Monsters, HBO, The Learning Channel and the Criterion Collection, among others. For more information visit aerostaticmusic.com.
VADE (Anton Marini) is a video performance artist, programmer and video engineer specializing in real time video systems, glitch aesthetics and visual effects. His work explores designing software environments and systems for real time video as well as performing abstract visualizations and urban video collages. Marini is a former researcher in residence at NYU’s Brooklyn Experimental Media Center and has taught at Parsons/New School Design and Technology Department. He has performed at events such as Live Performers Meeting, Club Transmediale, Ultrasound Festival, Vancouver New Music Festival, as well as leading several workshops in new media programming environments. His work has been featured and performed in music videos airing on MTV, Comedy Central, on DVD and in venues across the globe.
Sheila Gallagher is a multi-media artist living in Boston whose work explores the nature of perception, belief and different modes of representation. Her work takes many forms including video, flower installations, smoke paintings and computer aided drawing. Widely exhibited in New England, Gallagher’s work has been shown at such venues as The Institute of Contemporary Art, The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Boston Center for the Arts and Wellesley College. Gallagher received her MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University. She has taught at Wellesley College, the Art Institute of Boston , and is currently an Assistant Professor of Fine Arts at Boston College. Gallagher is represented by the Judy Rotenberg Gallery and lives and works in Jamaica Plain. For more information visit shegallagher.com.
Dennis Hlynsky is an artist living in Providence RI and is the head of the Film/Animation/Video Department at RISD. He began making video works in the mid 1970’s and has experienced a morphing of electronic tools. As these tools change through yearly updates he has observed many artists are using similar software. Where traditionally the tool had defined the practice; Dennis observes the artist tends to align practices with identities. It is the continual evolution of tool sets which triggers Dennis to believe digital artists are like reptiles; periodically crawling between virtual rocks and shedding digital skins – the animal remains the same. For more information visit risd.edu.
Brian Kane was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1965 and currently lives and works in Cambridge, MA. He received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1987. His work, which has influenced a generation of media artists, has been shown in museums, galleries, broadcast television, and published worldwide. Exhibitions include: Memery at MassMoCA ; OMG!, Hampden Gallery Incubator Project Space UMass Amherst; Murphy and Dine Gallery, NYC; People in Space, Shanghai World Expo; Go For Launch, Center For Contemporary Arts. Publications/Articles: Stickers, From Punk Rock to Contemporary Art, Rizzoli ETC Experimental Television Center DVD, Wired Magazine, Billboard Magazine. For an incredible array of work and ideas by Brian Kane, visit briankane.net.
Duncan Laurie was born December 7, 1947 in Detroit, Michigan. He has an MFA and BFA in Sculpture and a BA in Art & Literature of the 20th Century from University of Pennsylvania. He has been exploring and writing about semiotics and the relationship of subtle energy technology (psychotronic and radionic) to art; devising sonic plant and mineral communication experiments for artistic presentation (with Gordon Salisbury and others) since that time. For more information visit duncanlaurie.com.
Rupert Nesbitt graduated from The Cooper Union with a BFA in 1991 and received his MFA from Vermont College in 2007. In the early 1990’s his work involved documenting the performative and exploratory practice of climbing New York City’s numerous bridges. That roving sensibility resulted in extensive international travel in the developing world. This included nine summers spent in Egypt as an illustrator on archaeological digs. That experience resulted in illustration work in the field of toy design, ultimately resulting in multiple trips to Hong Kong and China as a designer and animator of robotic toys. During this time, Nesbitt co-founded a public art organization in Newport, Rhode Island and produced, curated and participated in numerous temporary outdoor exhibitions. Currently his practice interrogates issues of power and representation through the medium of digital animation. For more information visit rupertnesbitt.com.
Erik Sanner is a media artist living and working in New York City. His work has been presented at galleries, museums, academic institutions, company offices and alternative spaces. Sanner has been awarded corporate commissions and public art projects. Sanner’s work is held in over one hundred private collections. Sanner was awarded a Manhattan Community Arts Fund (MCAF) grant in 2007 for his public art project “Chess”, and a second MCAF grant in 2009 for “How to Enjoy Traffic Cones” – an exhibition curated by Sanner, featuring work by several artists treating traffic cones as aesthetic phenomena. Sanner integrates traditional media with contemporary methods of creative production. He frequently works with other artists, finding that collaborating on projects leads to outcomes neither individual would have anticipated. Recent collaborators include Lisa Kellner, James Merrell, and Kazue Taguchi.
Tangential to his studio practice, Sanner co-founded the APE (Aesthetic Purposes Exploration) discussion group, which meets four times a year to address the question “What is the function of art?” He is also a founding member of LISA (Leaders In Software and Art), where he sits on the Steering Committee. Additionally, he maintains a personal blog sharing his creative process. He has given a number of artist talks in New York City and elsewhere, covering the driving themes which run through his work as well as practical considerations.
Sanner’s overarching goal in all his work is to expand our experience of painting by utilizing technology. For more information visit eriksanner.com.