KURT HENTSCHLAGER
ZEE[RANGE]
October 3 – December 31, 2008
601 Wood Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15222
(412)471-5605
Wood Street Galleries, a project of The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, presents the world premiere of new work by New York-based Austrian artist Kurt Hentschlager: ZEE[RANGE], October 3-December 31, 2008. In this exhibition, Hentschlager creates an immersive environment of sight and sound reflecting on the nature of human perception and the accelerated impact of new technologies on both individual and collective consciousness.
Trained as a fine artist, Hentschlager began to exhibit his work in 1983, building surreal machine-objects and then video, computer animation and sound works. Between 1992 and 2003 he worked collaboratively as a part of the duo Granular-Synthesis. Employing large-scale projected images and drone like sound-scapes, his performances confronted the viewer on both a physical and emotional level, overwhelming the audience with sensory stimulation.
Hentschlager is a recipient of numerous prizes and large scale commissions. He has represented Austria at the 2001 Venice Biennial and has shown his work internationally for two decades. Selected presentations include the Millennium Museum, Beijing; Staedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Anchorage (Creative Time), New York; MAC – Musee d’Art Contemporain, Montreal; MAK – Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul; Ars Electronica Festival, Linz; ICC Inter-Communication-Center, Tokyo; Fondation Beyeler, Basel; and Palacio de Bella Artes, Mexico City.
His recent performance, FEED, premiered at the 2005 Venice Theatre Biennial and is currently touring. The procedural installation ARMA/cell was commissioned in 2006 by Le Fresnoy, Studio National des Arts Contemporains, France.
ZEE
Immersive Environment
Artificial Fog, Stroboscopes, Pulse Lights and Surround Sound, 2008
ZEE is a “mind-scape” in which artificial fog and stroboscopic light fully obscure the physical installation space. Based on the research and findings with FEED, the performance, ZEE is expanding on composing with multiple interfering strobe lights amidst fog and the effects those have on a human perception and decoding apparatus: the brain. A surround sound-scape synchronizes to interference phenomena – of what could be described as a psychedelic architecture of pure light.
“The result is an immersive environment of flickering light in which the ‘real’ physical world mutates into a primordial soup of pulsing sound, mist and colored light. It is both terrifying and transportive. We are in fact physiologically experiencing ‘sublime light,’ a light that is truly psychedelic. This is the world as viewed by a dying robot clone from the inside of a Turner landscape painting,” writes artist Claudia Hart in an essay on ZEE.
RANGE (World Premiere)
Range is a generative audiovisual installation fluctuating between abstract and realistic forms.
The work unfolds in an extremely limited virtual space, in which three-dimensional characters are stuck in place, with barely any room to move, appearing as one ambiguous mass. A kind of shadow play emerges, with both gradual and also abrupt changes over time, in both tone and mood. The sound track of Range, synchronizes to the visual drama and can best be described as colored drone.
An artist talk will be held on Saturday, October 4, at 1 p.m.
Wood Street Galleries
601 Wood Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15222
(412)471-5605
