June Mattingly's - Special "EYE" to watch

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moderndallas.net
Special “Eye” to Watch
June Mattingly // contributing art writer

“Starry, Starry Nights: Five Light-Filled Installations”
brought alive literally and figuratively in five distinct mediums by five distinguished Texas
artists curated by June Mattingly at the MAC or The McKinney Avenue* Contemporary
through May 14

After viewing Starry Starry Nights, I determined that writing is not my shtick and since
I have relied upon June to be our expert art adviser for the past year, I figured this
could be a challenge asking her to write about her own show.. hence, I have the
batton for this week..

I have been very fortunate over the past four years, to view an incredible selection
of art, served up in the Dallas Galleries. So in some part, I have become very
familiar with all the artists participating and the synergy that is created by this
group shines a bold light on the arts in Dallas.

This is no ordinary show.. walking up to The Mac, staring down on you is Macrodon,
with it's beautiful smile and radiant colors... or so I thought! Enter into the Square
Gallery and Jeremy McKane's underwater photography and video makes you
feel like you are in the water with swimmers. Susie Rosmarin's gridded paintings
pulsate three walls with light and color and Adela Andea's neon tube
sculptures (futuristic eco-systems) radiate in light.
and then....
Step into the In the New Works Space and experience a Symphony of
Lighting and Sculpture by Chris Lattanzio .... breathtaking!!!

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“Garnitza,” 2011, LED and CCL lights

“MACRODON,” 2010, inflatable toy, 20 feet high

Billy Zinser’s inflatable MACRODON sculpture based
on his toys brighten up the roof.

Billy’s giant MACRODON modeled after the clichéd used car dealership inflatable purple
gorilla to activate a mundane outdoor spaces, resulting in unexpected pop-up exhibitions
with the potential for spontaneous guerilla appearances as a sort of art happening.
Through the various incarnations of his work, “my objective is to broaden the scope and
reach of art, connecting the dots between painting, plastic collectable toys, and
projects of large-scale installation sculpture; “making artwork that can be accessed
through a variety of conduits and increase public interaction with art.”

By embracing the pop-aesthetic of the designer toy phenomenon made mainstream
by KidRobot and others, he depicts these imaginary figures dubbed MACRODONS,
with simple gestures and minimal visual information through various incarnations,
including limited edition MACRODONS plastic art toys, oversize sculptural installations,
and video animations. A new video is presented in the indoor reception space.

Billy is a recipient of the Dallas Museum of Art’s juried Arch and Anne Giles Kimbrough
Fund and represented by Public Trust, which gave him a one-person, a gallery that
specializes in the newest talent. Billy has studied art abroad, one year at the Art
Institute of Chicago and has a BA from the University of Texas in Austin. Additional
exhibitions/awards include “Juror’s Choice Award” at 500X Gallery, “Choice Cuts”
at the Dallas Art Fair and “Art+Object” at Marty Walker Gallery, Dallas.

“The Tiny Dancer,”2011, photograph, 6 x 4 feet

Jeremy McKane’s underwater photography and
a video submerge the viewer us in color in the
square gallery...

Jeremy is captivated by underwater fashion photography. “Sure! These were shot at night.
I like the effect of light on darkness, the way the darkness attracts your eye to the colors
and allows you to experience a colorful ballet right before your eyes.” This effect works
well in stills as well as video which is why his exhibition has both still photos as well as video
which is perfectly projected on to the floor as if the viewer is in the water with the swimmers.

Jeremy personally designed and installed five six-foot photographs in hand constructed
aluminum mountings designed to have the photograph an exact 90 degrees from the
viewer’s eye to the surface of the print.

He originally got into the field of photography by taking on commercial real-estate jobs.
So he devised a way to lift a SLR camera in a model helicopter to get his camera in
places he could not with a lift or even a real helicopter but he wanted to be more
artistic and not just another photographer. Photographing underwater was just
another challenge for this fearless, talented photographer who tells a story without
words.

“If we were to stop travelling so fast, what would we notice? How would we see the
world if we slowed down? We are all time travelers and my job as a photographer is
to stop you from looking at your world that travels at the speed of light and come
down to a stationary speed where everything stops, everything is in sync.”

Left: “#403 Blue-Violet,” 2008, acrylic on canvas, 20 x 20 inches
Right: Red-Violet-Yellow, 2010, 50"x50" acrylic on canvas, 50 x 50 inches

Susie Rosmarin’s gridded paintings pulsate three
walls with light and color.
The stunning paintings of Susie’s literally light up and move in sync from their private space
on the canvas. The perception of light exudes or jumps out from tight linear overlapping
patterns designed in brilliant, clearly defined color combinations and sharp, synchronized
glowing white backgrounds. The inescapable attraction to her paintings is they defy the
limitations of two-dimensionality in their charged up, conceivably moving environment
of color and light.

While mathematics play a central role in her work, Susie’s exacting and skillful method
of executing the overlapping grids is inspired by fractal geometry and the Op Art
movement in the 1960s, hard-edge abstraction, the observation of constant pattern,
repetition and geometry in observed objects in our living encounters. This complicated
mathematical formula is based on each layer of the color pattern arrangement being
taped, painted, waited on to dry and repeated. A series of small paintings and another
series of substantially sized paintings both depict contrasting color combinations from
the color wheel within the one painting.

Susie, a Houston-based artist received a BA from the University of St. Thomas in Houston
and an MFA from Pratt Institute in New York. The permanent collections of the Dallas
Museum of Art, the McNay in San Antonio and the Houston Museum of Fine
Arts own her pieces. She is represented by Dunn and Brown Contemporary in Dallas,
the Texas Gallery in Houston and the Danese Gallery in New York.

Adela Andea’s fluorescent tube sculptures radiate
in light.

Her light sculptures powered exclusively by manmade electronics submerge one wall in
the biggest space into an ambiguous and mystifying landscape. Her “futuristic eco-
systems” use intricately weaved circuits of LED and CFL lights, computer hardware and
manufactured building materials, consumer electronics and mass produced objects
embody both a physical presence as well as ethereal sensibility. These exuberant
sculptures with jutting bolts of lights and organic explosion of electrical parts and
whirring fans make the visitor wish to celebrate.

Andea is skilled at drenching seemingly contained spaces with brightly illuminated,
kinetic free-form sculptures of fluorescent strips that also submerge the attention-
spanning surrounding spaces into truly beautiful hypnotic sensory experiences. With
light alone she transcends the viewer into a computer-created uplifting and totally
unreal reality. The hardware sections, a medium unto themselves support and hold
the strips together and are an integral element in the complicated digitally conceived
constructions. The glow surrounding the whole wall increases the electrifying presence
of the art piece.

These dazzling light displays, a legacy of Flavin’s eloquent minimalism are “reminiscent
of an Eastern European disco.” Romanian-born, Adela lives and works in Denton and
teaches at the University of North Texas while completing an MFA in New Media. In 2011
she had a solo show at Anya Tish’s in Houston and in Dallas in Cris Worley’s gallery.

Chris Lattanzio’ - Lotus Flower Wall

Chris Lattanzio’s ceiling, walls light and sound
Installation “Lotus Room” in the New Works Space.

In Buddhism, lotus flowers mean purity of speech, mind and body rising above the waters
of desire and attachment; Chris creates a room immersion in line and color, a “space for
contemplation and healing.”

He literally paints with light to take the realm of painting from pigment to spectral color.
There is a 10 minute cycle of lights, solid colors, patterns and sequences running 5 times
an hour with intermissions of pure white light.

The 3-d line sculptures are carved out of ¼ inch steel plate, powder coated white with
¼ inch white Plexiglas and led light tubes. Three Buddha portraits reach from 60 x 84 x 12
inches and the Celebration Dance measures 108 x 84 x 12 inches. Five 36 inch diameter
“spinning dancers, eight 72 x 49 x 12 inch diameter lotus flowers suspend from rafters
while 110 laser carved lotus flowers mounted 4 inches off the wall repeat a theme on
all four walls.

Each wall in the gallery is colored with LED fixtures mounted in ceiling that are normally
used to light up buildings/bridges and programmed and synced with the sculpture
lights and background music. The LED lights, the greenest light around with lights
averaging 100,000 hours sip electricity give a bright, warm glow.

Chris met Donald Judd in Marfa while working on music and a video for a pop group.
Another important influence on his art is Dan Flavin, a contemporary and friend of
Judd’s during the 60s – both “blew the boundaries between the historically specific
qualities of painting and sculpture.”

The MAC | 3120 McKinney | Dallas | TX | 75204
the-mac.org