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2/5/2007

Zilvinas Kempinas

Spencer Brownstone Gallery, New York

White Noise

Zilvinas Kempinas' site-specific installations combine an evocative employment of unusual materials such as video tape, with a sophisticated engagement with the way a viewer relates physically and optically to a work in space.

In two recent installations at PS1 Museum in New York, Kempinas transformed the spaces assigned to him with the most serene of on-site interventions. In '186,000 mi/s', the artist used needles attached to the wall to conjure an elaborate geometric pattern via the shadows cast by the gallery's light fixtures. And 'Still' employed cut strips of videotape suspended in parallel lines between two walls of another space to create an illusion of depth and monumentality with the lightest of means.

'Fifth Wall', another piece that uses videotape, is emblematic of Kempinas' practice. Strips of tape are this time suspended between floor and ceiling, thin edge facing the entrance of the room by which the viewer first experiences the piece. The micro-thin tape completely disappears from this angle and the room seems empty. Moving around the space, however, the surface edge of the tape becomes visible and a wall materializes before our eyes... only to disappear again when we turn our backs to exit the space.

This momentary disjunction between what the eye sees and the body experiences is cleverly extended by the artist's specific use of audio and videotape. Ostensibly a neutral carrier of the virtual worlds of sound and images, we are usually only confronted with the material nature of tape when something goes wrong with our VCR. But rather than simply emphasizing the materiality of the medium, Kempinas uses tape in order to extend it's virtuality or transformative potential by other means.

'Flying Tape' features a large loop of videotape floating and spinning in mid air - held there by the vortex of air created by industrial fans pointed outward toward the gallery walls. Again, the specific dimensions of the space are integral to way the piece works: the tape, both subject to, yet magically defiant of gravity, is maintained there by the artists subtle orchestration of found elements and the careful calibration of introduced forces.

Opening Thursday May 3rd, 6-8pm

Spencer Brownstone Gallery
39 Wooster Street - New York
Asmission free

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