ART CITIES:N.York-T. J. Wilcox
T.J. Wilcox’s work is characterized by a fascination with personal narrative and the ways in which history is always under construction, woven from fact, myth, memory, associations, and the bombardment of information we all receive on a moment-to-moment basis. His poetic films collage fact, fiction, myth, memory, and fantasy, creating vignettes that infuse the immersive spectacle of cinema with the intimacy of a short story.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Gladstone Gallery Archive
In his monumental Installation “In The Air” (17/5-30/8/15) at the Whitney Museum of American Art, had presented a time-lapse panoramic view of New York City shot from the roof of the artist’s studio from dawn to dusk, interrupted by six short films inspired by a different view from his studio windows. T. J. Wilcox in his exhibition ”Equivalents”, presents new film installations and lenticular photographic lightboxes, exploring the movement and mutation of cloudscapes as compelling abstracted narratives. In this installation, the artist leads viewers to look upward to the ceiling, an often-overlooked surface within the gallery space. Suggestive of the natural world beyond the enclosed built environment and beyond human stature, the assembled projections offer a view of the everyday experience of gazing upward at the sky. The artist has produced sculptures that hang from the ceiling at a single point, comprising an arrangement of steel, Plexiglas and projected video. These hanging sculptures suspend in balance a group of projection screens arranged to float overhead like a cluster of abstracted clouds. Wilcox’s structures engender awe for the enormity and phenomena of the natural world that often goes unnoticed. The exhibition also features the artist’s film of the sky as five lightboxes. Through lenticular printing, the act of animation is made physical as viewers perceive shifting clouds through phenomenological experience. In Wilcox’s lightboxes and films, the expansive world is distilled without being simplified, what is too large to comprehend is put forth as an opportunity to imagine the atemporal and mythological world around us.
Info: Gladstone Gallery, 515 West 24th Street, New York, Duration: 18/3-23/4/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.gladstonegallery.com
