Više od 50 video-instalacija o snovima i arhitekturi: propadanju i obrnutom kaosu, beskrajnim tunelima, vremenu i prostoru koji djeluju po drukčijim načelima...
Supernatural je jedan od najljepših video-radova koje sam ikada vidio (kao da Tarkovski snima tekuće-kristalnu, floralno-ludu auru katedrala).
www.vanmcelwee.com/
"An alchemy occurs when the outer world is transformed into video: it becomes mind-stuff. I carry this process forward, questioning the nature of reality, exploring time and dimensionality by weaving fragments of the world into new patterns. In this way, video can enjoy the same freedom as painting and music; it can be something, not just about something." VM
"McElwee is an ultra prolific digital pioneer of the highest order. With each new piece he finds yet another way to invade his software and create images that previously could not have been conceived much less seen."Andrew Lampert, Anthology Film Archives, New York
"The expansion of consciousness, the creation of timelessness and the generation of new worlds embody beauty without boundaries in Van McElwee’s work."TL Reid, Afterimage
"As gorgeous as any fireworks display…dazzling astral patterns."Stephen Holden, The New York Times
"McElwee’s video is a magnificent piece of art. It can be argued that Liquid Crystal simulates a new reality that is appropriate for survival in the hypermodern age."Robert Kohn, Afterimage
"An artful magician of time and space."Ann-Sargent Wooster
"Van McElwee draws us into a world of flux, a world which consists only of incessant transition, and dares us to feel at home in the exhilaration of this shifting universe."David Finkelstein, Film Threat
Van McElwee's body of video work includes over fifty single channel pieces, installations and web projects. Grants and awards include: The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, The American Film Institute Independent Filmmaker Award, The National Endowment for the Arts Independent Production Fund (seven time recipient), and a travel grant from the Government of India. McElwee’s work has been exhibited extensively worldwide and is represented by The Kitchen in New York, Bruno David Gallery in St. Louis, Heure Exquise! in France, LUX in the UK, the Inter Media Art Institute in Germany, and Trabant Gallery in Austria.
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AND/OR 2011 7:10. HD projection with sound. Dimensions variable.
A wandering figure traces tunnels through a space of possibilities.
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HALF-REAL 2010 7:30. HD projection with sound. Dimensions variable.
Here the medium echoes the brain’s processing of older impressions into totally new forms, into fresh patterns to fill the empty screen of awareness.
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SUPERNATURAL 2011 5:55. DVD projection with sound. Dimensions variable.
Waves of variation reveal the contours of impossible form, as if the process of decay were reversed, causing delicate structures to emerge from the grain of chaos.
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RED AND BLUE ARMIES IN A FOREST 2010 6:23 minutes. 16:9 4:3 DVD projection. Dimensions variable.
YouTube Laser Tag footage is used here to represent two armies converging in a forest. In this scene, each group is monitoring the movement of the other, constantly updating simulations of possible encounters. Current and future events form a feedback loop between the real and the virtual; a simulation of simulations.
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THE CAPITOL OF THE MULTIVERSE 2009 8:22. 16:9 Standard or High Definition, DVD projection. Dimensions variable.
A neoclassical form breathes and mutates, overlooking a shifting horizon.
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NAVIGATORS Melting Chronons 2009 7:36. 4:3 DVD projection. Dimensions variable.
The grain of time is imagined at close range, revealing not a straight line, but turbulence, one moment melting into another.
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VARIFOLD 2010 9:35. DVD projection with sound; dimensions variable.
A motionless camera stares at a city branching in time. The screen moves with half-real forms: a cross-section of probability space.
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LIQUID CRYSTAL 2009 15:10. DVD projection,16:9, SD. Dimensions variable.
Imagine a fly's eye, but with each facet roaming independently through nighttime Tokyo. These multiple perspectives are woven together at brain wave frequencies, creating new patterns and new spaces.
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ALTERNITY - A Figure in Manifold Space 2008 6:48. DVD projection. Dimensions variable
The vanishing point of linear perspective is expanded to a plane. This allows all of the potential events within that vanishing point to mingle freely on the surface of the screen. Local sounds blend and shift. The expanded horizon causes reverberating fractures in time; multiple realities branch and flow through one another, creating a sponge-space of possibilities.
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APERSPECTIVAL HOUSE 2007 5:30. DVD projection. Dimensions variable
This house is under construction. Its design incorporates numerous points of view into one flowing form. The sound is a field of musical patterns without a tonal center.
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APERSPECTIVAL HOUSE VARIATION 2008 5:30. DVD projection. Dimensions variable
Video : VAN McELWEE
Music: TOM HAMILTON
This house is under construction. Its design incorporates numerous points of view into one flowing form.
The music for Aperspectival House uses a process of kaleidoscopic sound layering, as Hamilton’s parallel to the additive textures found in the video. All the original sounds are short recordings of construction sounds – hammering and sawing – which are transformed into somewhat coherent pitches and rhythms. TH
“Where today we seem to discern only shrieks and dissonance, tomorrow we will find a new tone, a new form, a new perception.”
Jean Gebser
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HYPERPLASM 2007 3:42. DVD projection. Dimensions variable
Real-world objects are turned inside-out, imploding into unnatural spaces, becoming a single substance of endless forms.
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DIAGONAL DRIFT 2006 10:00. DVD projection. Dimensions variable
Imagine a filmstrip of a nocturnal American landscape. The vertical frames, as usual, represent time, but here there are horizontal frames that represent parallel universes. This piece illustrates a diagonal movement across that field of frames, so that worlds continuously melt into similar worlds, always in-between realities. If these imaginary filmstrips are cut, twisted and turned back on themselves, the image changes abruptly. In keeping with the philosophy and the mood of the piece, a cellular automata program (Wolframtones) was used to create artificial mathematical melodies that constantly shift from one strange tonal system to another.
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PARIS IN THE 21st CENTURY 2006 7:48. DVD projection. Dimensions variable
This work is a reference to Jules Verne’s Paris in the 20thCentury and a science-fiction world in which time and space operate in new ways. Here, the Paris Metro is a teleporter; here, branching timelines penetrate strange spaces that contain only fragments of the original Metro’s shattered labyrinth.
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VAT 2005 22 min 51 sec
Manufactured items are ideas materialized. Vat, created from hundreds of actual objects performs a reversal: the artifacts emerge from all primal chaos into their ideal forms. The objects rotate continuously (the equivalent of an arcing camera), opening to reveal new spaces; as level upon level of impossible forms unfold. For the soundtrack, a recording of the ocean was literally played through all the strings of a baby grand piano. The results were used to excite the piano’s strings again and again, producing a variety of exotic tones and colorations.
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FLAG AND ITS SHADOW 2004
The American flag as a symmetrical form with shifting hues, emblematic of complexities and contradictions. 3:22 or continuous installation
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NATURELAND 2003 14 min 3 sec 2003
Elevator music branches and flows in new directions. Unadorned concrete structures exude layer upon layer of natural scenery. These virtual vistas unfold in surges, accompanied by mutating Muzak. Natureland reflects the crucial process by which we navigate the nested realities of our programmed environment, embracing illusion and its mechanism, weaving dissonant strands of experience into a pattern that we can call "our world."
"The expansion of consciousness, the creation of timelessness and the generation of new worlds embody beauty without boundaries in Van McElwee’s video art. His work is challenging; it compels us to experience, perceive, and ultimately to live more fully." T.L. Reid, Afterimage
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STUPAFORM 2002 7 min 25 sec 2002
The result of extensive location shooting, Stupaform gathers into one moment the myriad manifestations of the Buddhist stupa, or pagoda. Stupaform oscillates between the inner and outer aspects of this symbol of transcendence, distilling an essence. The actual structures become electronic phenomena, apparitions of the stupa’s inner form. The sound of a Nepalese bell follows this vector; a physical reflection of an unstruck vibration.
" McElwee goes to the essence of this type of building, showing us a glittering, shimmering, dissolving building seemingly woven of golden threads into a fluid temporal matrix. Sound and image are one." Ann-Sargent Wooster, artist, writer; program notes for NAP Biennial
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HELIOGOS 2001 10 min 15 sec
Three garden paths twist and turn through a labyrinth of time. The earth orbits the sun as a camera orbits the gardens. Six years are cut and folded as a playful edit-form spins its web. 11:00 minutes
"Ultimately, Mcelwee is tracking the effect of time on nature as he moves from summer to winter and back again. Editing is the key here to this complex origami project (think of each edit as a crease)." -Ann-Sargent Wooster, artist, writer
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WAVEFORM MODULATION 2001 7 min 22 sec
In this piece, a radical work of Dutch architecture becomes the raw material for a series of experiments with time. Born in a computer, the building jumps again into video where it can mutate freely. Here, particles becomes pixels and matter becomes light, as the structure is melted, frozen, shattered, and melted again into a new, transmissible signal. Shot at the H2O expo, Zierikzee, The Netherlands. Architect: Lars Spueybroek/NOX.
"Van McElwee transports his viewers hypnotically, viscerally, imaginatively through ingenious fascinating images and sounds. Traveling through his video art, you know you’re in the hands of a dreamer and an artist." - Diane Carson, St. Louis Riverfront Times
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PROCESSION 2000 18 min 1 sec
In communal celebrations, such as parades, the event creates a new space. A city becomes a fantastic version of itself; a new creature that erupts in the streets and then disappears. In Procession, awareness is given a richly dimensional vantage point on this phenomenon. The parade’s flow is intensely modulated by editing, folded into itself again and again. Waves of transformation surge through a fabric of recurring moments, until the river of time swells and floods its banks. Also available as a muli-channel installation.
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CONFLUENCE 1999 13 min 33 sec
A complex editing score is applied to images and sounds gathered by a video camera moving through crowded places: a market in Cairo, a carnival in St. Louis, commuters in Tokyo and a funeral in Benares. The unique edit-form of Confluence weaves these streams of movement together like notes in a musical score. Events are broken loose from their normal flow and organized into autonomous clusters. The result is a transformation of the recorded world, and its projection into a new temporal matrix. The tunnel of time becomes porous; crisscrossed by passageways and escape routes. 14:00 minutes.
". . . an exotic mélange of visual and audio rhythms." - John Columbus, Director, Black Maria Film & Video Festival
"In Confluence, McElwee jumps from one location to the next as if merging into an altered state" - TL Reid, Afterimage
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LUXOR 1998 17 min 19 sec 1998
Luxor,Egypt, meets Luxor, Las Vegas, calling into question the nature of reality through a meltdown of the real and the replica. Each world is suspended and then reborn in the realm of video as past, present and future merge into one pulsing electronic moment. Luxor is also designed as a single channel installation. 18:00 minutes
"With its resplendent images, Luxor lures us into glittering hieroglyphic displays and sparkling sands as we ponder the mystery of where one location ends and another begins." - TL Reid, Afterimage
"The ‘real’ archaeological site meets its modern day ‘replica’ in Vegas, as McElwee collapses culture and history in the high desert." - Steve Seid, Curator, University Art Museum, Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, California
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RADIO ISLAND 1997 17 min 19 sec
In Buddhist architecture, the pagoda symbolizes Nirvana, the state of enlightenment. In Radio Island, this metaphor is expanded to include the entire built environment and the whole of ordinary consciousness. Mutating images of ancient and modern Japanese structures develop within a complex electronic score of radio signals and data transmission. Unusual editing techniques weave these images and sounds into a dense field of improvisation. The resulting texture becomes the raw material for totally new forms. Through a sea of noise, Radio Island charts a course from architecture to music; from the referential to the absolute.12:00 minutes.
"Radio Island takes the architecture of pagodas and broadcast towers, drawing staccato analogies between these transmitters of enlightenment." - Steve Seid, Curator, University Art Museum, Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley California
"In Radio Island, McElwee enlightens while he tightens." - Marieke Van Hal, The Worldwide Video Festival, Amsterdam
"Power lines become like organic branches and pagodas pulsate with an inner life." - TL Reid, Afterimage
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TRANSFINITE LOOPS 1996 10 min 3 sec
Transfinite Loops is a reflection on the mind's tendency to create metaphysical order in the face of chaos. The piece is both a model and a metaphor for that process. Nighttime images of carnival rides appear, mesh and then dissolve into blackness, accompanied only by the sound of wind. The work unfolds like a series of thoughts, as time and space are unraveled and woven back together into intricate knots.
"As gorgeous as any fireworks display, Van McElwee’s Transfinite Loops invents dazzling astral patterns." -Stephen Holden, The New York Times
"Vivid video origami erupts into a blizzard…leading out of time & space" -TL Reid, Afterimage
"Transfinite Loops is infectious, life-affirming and beautiful. It makes you feel good." -David Bonetti, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
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FOLDED FOLLIES is an improvisation on Bernard Tschumi’s deconstructionist follies at Parc La Villette in Paris. The structures, which the architect has described as "post-humanist, are translated into motion and then subjected to a radical transformation. Unusual demands are made of the recording capability of the medium, as video and audio signals are pushed to extremes. Space collapses and the follies are literally folded in time.
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FRAGMENTS OF INDIA 1993 10 min 20 sec
The mythologist Joseph Campbell wrote "a temple is a landscape of the soul." Fragments Of India explores this potential in the realm of video. Hindu, Muslim, and Jain architecture merge into a unified pattern of images. The sounds of India’s temples, mosques, tombs, and marketplaces form a marriage of video and architecture.
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BINDU 1993 17 min 19 sec
This piece embodies nested levels of form, content and abstraction. Visual fragments of the world come and go as packets of visual energy infused with the sound of the ocean. Watching Bindu should be like watching the space between thoughts; paying attention to the process of thinking rather than its content. The title is from Sanskrit, meaning roughly "Universal seed-point."
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SPACE SPLICE 1994 12 min 6 sec
Space Splice is a form of conceptual architecture that could only be realized in video. Forward motion and edits connect interior volumes shot in The United States, Europe, and India. The viewer experiences unimpeded movement through a network of hypothetical spaces.
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DISTANCE 1990 6 min 45 sec
The sound of a woman humming to herself is mixed with an expansive drone. This intimate acoustic space is visually extended by patterned images, moving in and out of a white field.
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REFRACTION 1990 17 min 19 sec
Natural form is carried by editing into a new direction. Moving shots of bare tree limbs and the songs of a mother and her five-year-old son are made into a special food for the eyes and the ears. Intense looping, layering and tape speeding allow the viewer to experience over twenty million edits in five minutes.
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SPACE TIME LOOPS : CITYSCAPE 1988 17 min 19 sec
Loops are used to create a new screen space and to play with the boundaries between space and time. With each loop, time is repeated and space is extended into a continuous surface.
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INSIDE 1986 5 min 7 sec
Dream and architecture merge in this work. A large mall is extended into an endless tunnel, which is then revealed to be a unit in a honeycomb of similar spaces.
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WATER, LIGHTBULBS, DYING BUGS AND DOORBELLS 1981 2 min 47 sec
A doorbell rings, insects are electrocuted, light bulbs turn on and off; water spirals continuously
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MOBIUS FILM LOOP PROPELLERS 1980 5 min or continuous installation.
A film loop twisted at its splice reverses a scene to its mirror image with each repetition.
Here, spinning propellers describe three different forms: an ascending helix of propellers, two lines of propellers intersecting and one propeller moving in a sideways figure eight. |
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SPLIT/FLOW 1979 11 min 20 sec
The screen is slit into colors. Through this moves a pattern that is constantly warped by waves. Another space opens up; level upon level of form is revealed. Clusters of voices repeat themselves. Alternating percussion and sharp edits counerpoint the auiovisual flow.
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DOUBLE FLAME 1979 3:25 minutes or single channel installation
A symmetrical object of contemplation
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WEB PROJECTS
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| COLOR VECTOR (2012) | MODULAR MAZES (2010) | FOURTH AXIS (2000) | CROSS SECTION (2003) |
An endless line passes through randomly edited color spaces
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Six experiments with indeterminate space
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Inside and outside views of a growing, segmented helix
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Frozen video with an added dimension
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Van McElwee
Paris in the 21st Century #10, 2008-09
Ink on Paper
24 x 32 inches
Edition of 5 (AP/2)
Van McElwee
Procession #9, 2008-09
Ink on Paper
24 x 32 inches
Edition of 5 (AP/2)
Van McElwee
Paris in the 21st Century #9, 2008-09
Ink on Paper
24 x 32 inches
Edition of 5 (AP/2)
Van McElwee
Procession #10, 2008-09
Ink on Paper
24 x 32 inches
Edition of 5 (AP/2)
Van McElwee
Supernatural #1, 2011
Ink on paper
7 x 9 inches
Van McElwee
Supernatural #9, 2011
Ink on paper
7 x 9 inches
Van McElwee
Supernatural #10, 2011
Ink on paper
7 x 9 inches
Edition of 5
Van McElwee
Supernatural #2, 2011
Ink on paper
7 x 9 inches
Edition of 5
Van McElwee
Supernatural #3, 2011
Ink on paper
7 x 9 inches
Edition of 5
Van McElwee
Supernatural #4, 2011
Ink on paper
7 x 9 inches
Edition of 5
Van McElwee
Supernatural #5, 2011
Ink on paper
7 x 9 inches
Edition of 5
Van McElwee
Supernatural #6, 2011
Ink on paper
7 x 9 inches
Edition of 5
Van McElwee
Supernatural #7, 2011
Ink on paper
7 x 9 inches
Edition of 5
Van McElwee
Supernatural #8, 2011
Ink on paper
7 x 9 inches
Edition of 5
Van McElwee
Reconstruction #9, 2008-09
Ink on paper
24 x 32 inches
Edition of 5 (AP/2)
Van McElwee
Reconstruction #10, 2008-09
Ink on paper
24 x 32 inches
Edition of 5 (AP/2)
Van McElwee
Reconstruction #11, 2008-09
Ink on paper
24 x 32 inches
Edition of 5 (AP/2)
Van McElwee
Reconstruction #12, 2008-09
Ink on paper
24 x 32 inches
Edition of 5 (AP/2)
Van McElwee
Reconstruction #15, 2008-09
Ink on paper
24 x 32 inches
Edition of 5 (AP/2)
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