Downstairs
Tuesday, 05 May 2009 to Friday, 03 Jul 2009

Installation
Caroline Thomas
In Search of Geography/ “Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy”

Artist's Statement
The simplest gesture I could think of was to pinch the clay with the thumb and forefinger of each hand simultaneously. The semi symmetrical impression left from the pressure of the space between the pinch also contains a relief of four fingerprints. The “pinches” are like units as if one of the many bricks from a production line, and they are also individual, each subtly different and seemingly organic by variation. The sculptures are made up of formations of these impressions pinched together. This practice addresses degrees of intentionality and aligns itself with eastern philosophy or repetitive meditative activities.

The conceptual structure within my work is used as a catalyst but the work is completed with an abandonment of this rigidity. Once a certain amount of pinched material is amassed I then make decisions that were not predetermined but are a response to the forms. These responses usually have something to do with an implication of movement or motion. The work is abstract but it hints towards metaphor: it is like a flower, a butterfly, coral, a wave, a wind pattern, (a rock garden). It wants Naturalism including movement, growth and decay. I apply color at various stages using a variety of techniques: oxides and stains mixed into the wet clay or painted on the surface of the unfired greenware. Once fired, the ceramics may be washed and sprayed with goauche and acrylic paint.

In Search of Geography/ “Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy” was made specifically for New Langton’s foyer; it is both a response to and reliant on the room. This work incorporates a 2-channel video and proposes parallels and reflections between the video image and the ceramic form. The title refers to Bas Jan Ader's "In Search of the Miraculous” exhibition (1975) and Sun Ra’s Album “Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy / Art forms of dimensions tomorrow” (1961).

- Caroline Thomas

Gallery
Tuesday, 05 May 2009 to Friday, 03 Jul 2009

Mixed-Media Installation
In Between the Outside-In

New Langton Arts announces an exhibition of new work and an installation by internationally acclaimed artist Pae White. White’s exhibition, In Between the Outside-In, follows from her encounters with the ecology and cultures of the Sierra foothills during her residency at the For-Site Foundation last year. The installation proposes new paradigms for art and landscape – from digital imaging to earthenware ceramics – that challenge the presumption of singularity in much site-specific art as encapsulated in Richard Serra's famous dictum "to remove the work is to destroy the work."

White’s practice is known for blurring any boundary that may remain between site and non-site, art and design, and the iconic and the everyday. Using a noninvasive data collection and mapping procedure, three-dimensional scans were taken of an 800 year-old massive oak tree, a wild raspberry bush, and a manzanita grove in the landscape near Nevada City, California. White uses these topographical scans as conceptual source material, working with a Dreamworks animator and visual effects artist to create a series of color-treated, morphing animations. Viewers enter into two trapezoidal chambers in which they are immersed in these images, surrounded by reflected and refracted light. Viewers are thus confronted with living organisms that are at once intimately known and yet untouched.

Collections are inherently embedded in White’s work – from the rarefied and artistic to the humble. According to White, collecting and collections are both a way of begetting knowledge and of keeping knowledge at bay. As a material rather than an ethereal element of the installation, White incorporates an extensive, eccentric collection of ceramics drawn from the collection of Nevada City’s Joseph Meade. This collection of ceramic vessels embraces anonymous and well-known ceramic artists, thrift store and flea market finds. Unlike the projections, this collection is resolutely physical and tactile. Displayed as a massed field, these earthenware objects deconstruct the relationship of nature to culture.