ART CITIES:Ν.York-Diana Thater
Diana Thater one of the most important video-artist presents for the first time at the David Zwirner Gallery in N. York a new type of installation, involving an enclosed video projection, ceiling screen, and light, as well as two new video walls.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: David Zwirner Gallery Archive
Since the early 1990s, she has created a wide range of film, video, and installation-based works whose sculptural forms engage spatial perception in physical, as well as conceptual, terms. Her pioneering oeuvre was among the first to push the boundaries of how new media art is displayed, helping to cement its position in the art world. Natural diversity, wildlife, and conservation have been persistent themes in the artist’s work, and she has dedicated herself to an examination of the varied kinds of relationships humans have constructed with animals. While her in-depth studies of ecosystems and animal behavior propose observation as a kind of understanding in itself, her ethical position is implicit in the work, which, while subtly political, provides views of the sublime in all its incarnations, stunning, beautiful, and simultaneously terrifying. In her new installation, which like the exhibition is titled “Science, Fiction”, Thater focuses on the dung beetle and the intricate navigation system it deploys in disposing balls of animal excrement, its main source of nutrition. Recent studies have revealed that the species uses the Milky Way to orientate itself at night, currently the only insect known to do so. Thater superimposes her footage of the beetles with views of the Milky Way, creating a double video projection that is at once abstract and particular-the sophistication of the small insects’ navigation systems becomes compounded with the infinite complexities of the universe in a meditative fusion of macro and micro realms. Deploying a new type of installation, Thater presents the footage on a screen attached to the ceiling, projected from within a closed-off, freestanding box. Mirroring the setup of the scientific experiment with the dung beetles, its walls are lit from below, creating the illusion of levitation. Also on view are two video walls showing the Milky Way, respectively titled Sidereus Nuncius and The Starry Messenger. Thater shot the galaxy at Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, positioning her camera beneath the Zeiss star projector. Lit in a bright blue light, the latter resembles a spaceship on a celestial mission and similar models are used to train astronauts how to navigate in space. It further creates a visual connection to the dung beetle and its dependence on the night sky.
Info: David Zwirner Gallery, 533 West 19th Street, in N. York, Duration: 8/1-21/2/15, www.davidzwirner.com
