curated by: Richard Chartier (www.3particles.com)
This program, curated by renowned sound artist Richard Chartier, is a collection of audio/visual works reinterpreting the Color Field movement by an international array of critically acclaimed sound and new media artists including: Frank Bretschneider, Alan Callander, Chris Carter + Cosey Fanni Tutti (Chris & Cosey, Throbbing Gristle), Sue Costabile, Evelina Domnitch + Dmitry Gelfand, Mark Fell (SND, Blir) + Ernest Edmonds, Tina Frank + General Magic, Ryoichi Kurokawa, Stephan Mathieu, Steve Roden, and Bas Van Koolwijk. Colorfield Variation includes new works especially created for this program.
Color Field painting, an abstract style that emerged in the 1950s following Abstract Expressionism, is characterized by canvases painted primarily with stripes, washes and fields of solid color. The first serious and critically acclaimed art movement to originate in the nation’s capital, Washington Color School was central to the larger Color Field movement. As a reaction to the emotional energy and gestural surface of Abstract Expressionists, the Color Field artists and members of The Washington Color School turned away from the individual mark in favor of color itself becoming the content of the work. Breaking painting down to the fundamental formal elements, the Color Field artists created pure
simplified, large-format, color-dominated fields on a large monumental scale.
During the early sixties, Color Field painting was the term used to describe younger artists whose work were related to second generation abstract expressionism yet clearly pointed toward a new direction in American painting. Artists such as Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Helen Frankenthaler, Leon Berkowitz, Frank Stella and others eliminated recognizable imagery from their canvas and presented abstraction as an end in itself with each painting as one unified, cohesive, monolithic image.
This program in its original form was created for Washington Project for the Arts/Corcoran (www.wpac.org) as part of the city wide Colorfield Remix events which took place in April-June 2007 in Washington, DC.
AUDIO/VIDEO SCREENING program:
STEVE RODEN (US)
“dark over light earth” / 13:00 / 2007
www.inbetweennoise.com
ALAN CALLANDER (US)
“CF01” / 5:00 / 2007
www.visionload.com
FRANK BRETSCHNEIDER (DE)
“looping i-vi (excerpt)” / 12:00 / 2004-5
www.frankbretschneider.de
STEPHAN MATHIEU (DE)
“Orange was the color of her dress” / 10:00 / 2007
www.bitstream.de
SUE COSTABILE (US) + BEEQUEEN (NL)
“AMP_SWELLI” / 3:49 / 2005
www.sue-c.net / www.beequeen.nl
TINA FRANK + GENERAL MAGIC (AT)
“Chronomops” / 2:00 / 2006
www.frank.at
BAS VAN KOOLWIJK (NL)
“FDBCK/AV - Silver” / 3:29 / 2007
www.umatic.nl
CHRIS CARTER + COSEY FANNI TUTTI (UK)
“Chronomanic Redux” / 10:00 / 2007
www.cartertutti.com
RYOICHI KUROKAWA (JP)
“Scorch” / 3:04 / 2005
www.ryoichikurokawa.com
EVELINA DOMNITCH + DMITRY GELFAND (RU/US)
“Ten Thousand Peacock Feathers in Foaming Acid” / 8:00 / 2007
www.portablepalace.com
ERNEST EDMONDS (AU) + MARK FELL (UK)
“Broadway One” (excerpt) / 2:00 / 2004-5
www.markfell.com / www.ernestedmonds.com
LIVE PERFORMANCE:
SAWAKO (JP/NY) (20:00)
www.troncolon.com
LIVE PERFORMANCE:
“SPECIFICATION.FIFTEEN” (40:00)
RICHARD CHARTIER + TAYLOR DEUPREE
www.12k.com
www.3particles.com
For this collaboration, sound artists Richard Chartier and Taylor Deupree were invited by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, to create a new live work inspired by the Seascapes series of renowned Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto on the occasion of his retrospective exhibition. The result is this live recording, Specification.Fifteen. This work premiered on March 30, 2006 in front of the curved panoramic window of the Museum’s Lerner Room as the sun set across the city’s skyline. Specification.Fifteen evokes the stillness and opposing yet related spaces of Sugimoto1s Seascapes, which suggest infinitesimal change and variation under a seemingly uniform surface.
A second performance for Transmediale.07 at the Akademie der Kuenste [Berlin, Germany], where the work was also exhibited and awarded one of five Honorable Mentions from the Jury. For this live performance a new video work was created utilizing the 13 Sugimoto Seascape images which had been present in the Hirshhorn exhibit. Over 45 minutes the perfectly aligned still images transition and dissolve between and over each other in an often barely noticeable 3 minute hazy and hallucinatory shift.
“Water and air. So very commonplace are these substances, they hardly attract attention and yet they vouchsafe our very existence. Mystery of mysteries, water and air are right there before us in the sea. Every time I view the sea, I feel a calming sense of security, as if visiting my ancestral home; I embark on a voyage of seeing.” - Hiroshi Sugimoto