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7/9/2004

Meta Vision

Paul Sharpe Contemporary Art, New York

Craig Coleman
Lee Whittier

New York, NY – Paul Sharpe Contemporary Art (PSCA) announces the opening of a new exhibit entitled Meta Vision, featuring Craig Coleman, a multi-media artist who resides in Macon, Georgia, and Lee Whittier, a DVD video artist who resides in New York, New York. The exhibit explores both figurative and abstract forms in electronic media including DVD video, projection, and still images. Meta Vision brings together two artists who have been close friends since growing up in Florida and who share certain affinities in their work. Opening September 8, 6 – 9 PM, thru October 2.

Coleman explores the process of filtering and the interplay of light as it pertains to human perception. In his work he seeks to challenge the viewer to look again and to perhaps respond differently than one would normally. In “Metastrophy”, meaning to look anew, he offers somewhat familiar images that have been manipulated through computer programs, backlit with light, or the positioning of small objects to new effect. His work is conceptual in nature with him using various media to interpret his ideas, including resin, photography, assemblage, sound, and video, and video projection.

Craig Coleman's installations blend photography, electronics, image projection, sound, and various human interactive devices. He mixes low technology with high technology to comment on our rapidly changing culture and our fascination with science, technology, and material addictions. Coleman's art resembles a playground for ideas, aesthetics, and the intellect; a peak into the panoptic philosophical sphere of perspectives in which to view our culture. Using humor and irony, his work seeks the similar in the dissimilar, and tries to extract meaningful metaphors out of throw away items. In so doing, his art reflects on the incessant efforts of capitalism and western science towards "progress" and individual preservation, which linger in the underbelly of our collective psychosis.

Coleman received a B.F.A. in mixed media from Florida State University and a M.F.A. in photography from the University of Colorado at Boulder. His first solo show at PSCA was in June 2002. He currently is on the faculty at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia.

Lee Whittier presents sumptuous digital video imagery on DVD and as light-jet prints. This show marks the continued evolution of Whittier's concept of “Art For Televisions”. An attempt to bring video art into the home, by transforming dormant flat-screen televisions and computer monitors into living canvases. He creates his art work with video camera and computer, discovering abstract forms in nature and revealing universes present within microcosms not easily recognized in daily life. Working with footage taken from nature, he transforms it into moving paintings—progressions of color, form, and texture. In the words of Robert Knafo, who recently featured Whittier in an issue of Studio Visit magazine, “[I]n Lee's videos something is captured moving—shimmering, undulating, evaporating, pulsing, dripping, flying… Objects are dematerialized to a point where they retain some borderline, contingent recognizability, in and out of which they may slip from moment to moment.”

In the moving images and stills, black becomes the baseline for color within the work. Whittier creates saturated fields of color against intense darks. “Color, then, is one of the primary forces of the world and draws its power from our victory over the dark," Whittier explains. "Its is a strangely enticing world I'm hoping to create, and I want to feel along with the viewer like a visitor for the first time."

As a digital media artist, Whittier collaborates with the Anemone Dance Theater and the music group Slow Six. He has had solo shows at PSCA in January 2001 (the gallery's inaugural show) and in December 2002. He has participated in numerous group shows throughout New York City and elsewhere. Whittier was a fellow at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. He received a B.A. in English from the Florida State University—where he won awards for poetry—and an Honorable Mention at the National Collegiate Poetry Fellowship.

In the image: Craig Coleman, 'Projection 3', Projected Digital Image, Variable, 2002

paul sharpe contemporary art,
86 Walker Street, Floor six, New York, NY 10013 T/F 646-613-1252

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