Adam Chapman Illuminations

Illuminations featured five technology-based works by Brooklyn artist Adam Chapman. The artist used videos, DVDs, projectors, and computers to generate and present art illuminating his fascination with birds, nature, language, and patterns. Using digital technology, Chapman modernized traditional drawing and collage techniques. He challenged viewers to look closely at themselves and the world around them, to perhaps pay attention to things that took for granted; for instance, the migratory pattern of common Grey Gulls or the dance-like movement of invasive Starlings. The exhibition began with a mirror in which fragmented images of gallery visitors were produced within a single image to form a Cubist-style self-portrait.

Also on view were two sets of images — one set comprised of fifteen pieces and the other, fifty — which were framed similarly to traditional drawings. However, Chapman utilized generative videos and monitors to form his dynamically fluid kinetic watercolor and graphite-like drawings. A large video project in which Chapman spliced together different images and dialogue from Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope was projected in the exhibition. Exploring the formal aspects of film, Chapman deconstructed an existing movie and reassembled it into a new work so that the entire movie was viewed in the span of five minutes and presented a completely different theme. A generative video installation was projected onto the ceiling in the back half of Kidspace where birds flew about in a natural manner, periodically converging to form letters slowly spelling out poems from the Manyoshu, eighth-century Japanese poems.

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