camminando + vernissages | World Making in the Hudson Valley

At the same time (July 9, 18 EST) two visual arts events in very close geographical locations of the Hudson Valley (both in Columbia County) were suggestive of "worldmaking".

In Hudson, Carrie Haddad Photography presented Mars: Adrift on the Hourglass Sea by the artists collaborative Kahn & Selesnick As typical of Kahn & Selesnick's work, the photographs narrate stories at the borderline between science fiction and surrealism, where technological landscapes marry a dream world.


The other "worldmaking" event happened a few miles away, at Art Omi, presenting Augmented Reality at Peeling Layers of Space Out of Thin Air: Augmented Reality installations by Architects including design by Vito Acconci Studio, Asymptote, Kol/Mac, Studio Daniel Libeskind, Metaxy, Thomas Leeser Architecture, SHoP, and Cleater Studio. The exhibition was curated by John Cleater.

Augmented Reality (AR) provides a real time integration/augmentation of perceptions from a physical environment with computer-generated sensory input, such as sound or three-dimensional graphics — differently from Virtual Reality (VR) which creates computer worlds completely separated from the physical environment. Several applications of AR were developed in the 1990s but recently, thanks to the widespread presence of smartphones, AR is gaining back popularity.

I was not very impressed by the AR design at Omi, which seem disconnected with the existing site, not differently from many of the sculptural work at Art Omi, which lack of site specificity. As a land artist myself I strongly believe in the connection between an intervention —either physical or virtual— and the landscape. Nevertheless I admire the curatorial effort, and if you have an Iphone or Android phone available (prerequisite to see the work) and are in the Hudson Valley, you should visit the site.

For more information on AR and VR you can see my 1996 book Designing Digital Space, the first book dealing with VR application in architecture. Information on AR at http://www.manifestar.info/ or on the Omi show at http://cleater.com/peeling/html/VIDEO.html

The sunset was real!

Vernissages | Hudson, July 17: Carrie Haddad Photography, Damiani and BCB Art

A lively evening, strolling in the Warren Street art galleries of Hudson ---blessed as usual by the sunset light which contributed to the fame of the Hudson School of Paintings.

Sun setting in Warren Street

Art Strolling: Enid Futterman and John Isaacs, editors and publishers of the quaterly magazine Our Town

A remarkable exhibition of photography ---mixed with other media and processes-- at Carried Haddad Photography. The exhibition of works by David Seiler and Cuban photographer Adrian Fernandez is on view from July 15 to August 15, 2010.

"David Seiler works in sepia tones and dusty grays, instilling a nostalgia in his photographs, most of which are portraits of one kind or another. The vintage quality that this color palette evokes suggests these photographs were excavated from someone's personal archives, transported from private to public view for the first time... Movement and fixity, life and death are in tension, imparting a spectral air to these works."

Six vibrant still lifes by Adrian Fernandez, part of a series entitled To Be or To Pretend, provide a complement to Seiler’s sepia tones. Just as Seiler’s photographs exhibit pseudo-wear and tear to belie their modernity, Fernandez’ works feign false identities: after sustained attention, one becomes aware that the blossoms are fake, lifeless. The artificiality in each of these photographs adds dimension to these works, lending them an element of irony and play.

Carrie Haddad and her artists

Nancy Goldring combines vision and revision in drawing, photography and projected images to create pictures and installations.

Margaret Saliske, a sculptural artist who uses digital photography as a primary element in her work, presented a new series titled, “Photo Deconstructions.”

Another remarkable photography exhibition at Damiani Gallery: former dancer and dance photographer Roy Volkmann explores the beauty in the human body and movement in the almost sculptural plasticity captured by his photographic portraits..

Enid Futterman conversing with Roy Volkmann

At BCB Art "using historical references and subtle, humorous, graphic symbols Scott Reynolds examines America’s current political, economic and cultural wars in his latest drawings. He employs an economical and iconographic language along with ideas of social commentary (similar to those found in his sculpture) to explore the fragmented conditions that substitute for a current American ethos."