Stay On It, curated by Heather Lowe at Keystone Art Projects, is awash in motion, kinetic, lenticular, video, neon crackle – and bright with color and light.
Fierce pink feathered leaves hang from Sung-Hee Son’s “Unbearable Lightness,” a towering fantasy tree with a spinning, motorized bust revolving at its heart, making the work at once flora and fauna. Lowe’s own “Silent Fargelli,” “Carousel Animales,” “Water Wheel” and the titular “Stay On It” are joy filled Ferris Wheel, carousel, sea scape and toddler blocks. They are simply brilliant lenticular works, several featuring collaborative elements from Robert Stevens and Martin Van Diest. Lowe’s work here enchants and meditatively hypnotizes – it is both easy and exciting to watch them as they shift or spin or turn.
Van Diest himself offers programmable LED sculptures, the meditative, brilliantly colored “Chichen Itza” and “Nested Pyramids.” These vivid, involving pieces looked fresh from every angle.
Adele Mills’ untitled mixed media works, as well as her “My Face Is In Your Hands” and “How Soon is Now” are created from mixed media and fabric, and not technically moving. Nonetheless they appear to be, as wavering and transformative, depending on where the viewer casts an eye, as if they were a lenticular works. Nancy Ivanhoe’s mixed media pieces, including the evocative “Moonlight Over Inglewood,” “Ocean Wave,” and three works from her Color Waves series are created from acrylic paint and metal screen mesh, but appear like wind caught in time, ready to start blowing onward.
Ray Chang’s interactive and charming “Into the Night” and “Animated Peephole Cinema,” are both witty and sharp. Neon artist Linda Sue Price’s “Critacy” offers a stunning and surreal form of plant life with its neon crackles in perpetual motion, as if the plant was growing before our eyes. Robert Costanza’s mysterious alchemy pulses from “Dopamine” and “Untitled,” two entirely different pieces aptly paired by Lowe, a mixed media sculpture that involves pump-activated water-flow and an acryllic and graphite painting which indicts commercialism and speaks to magic.
“Kili Vara (bird drawings)” from Sandeep K. Das and Franklin Londin’s “Evermorphs” are video presentations both kaleidoscopic and soaring. Last but not least, Melanie Mandl’s oil on wood “Same Same” evokes a brilliant sense of barely contained, ever evolving movement and sense of peril.
Lowe reveals herself once again as a compelling curator, as well as creator of some of the most innovative, satisfying art around. For the exhibition’s closing event, she brought the lush, lovely flamenco movements of dance artist Cicely Nelson Tong to create a moving, elegiac performance. Nelson Tong’s grace and fierceness flowed over the gathered audience.
While you may have missed this exceptional exhibition live, it will have future iterations, and for now you can view this treasure-packed art show online here. You must look.
- Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis