| Abrams Claghorn Gallery 1251 Solano Ave, Albany, California 94706 Showing July 5 - August 31, 2017 Recption: Saturday July 15, 5 - 7 pm Artist Talk: Saturday August 12, 5 - 7pm |
Bernie Lubell's interactive artworks were first introduced to us in 2015. We were looking back on the year, sharing our favorite works. While he's lived in San Francisco for a number of years, his work has been shown locally and internationally, and has received varying number of awards, including the Guggenheim Artists Fellowship in 2011. We're delighted he has joined us for Gathering: A Venison Magazine Retrospective!
 Just in Case // pine and music wire // 7" x 6" x 2.5" |  Just in Case // pine and music wire // 7" x 6" x 2.5" |
Artist Statement:
I make interactive installations that focus on the intersection of science and the arts -- but my work is adamantly low -tech. These installations use no computers or video or motors and are entirely powered by visitors to the show. As visitors work together to animate the mechanisms they create a theatre for themselves and each other. By requiring participation, touch and manipulation I get the audience to engage their bodies as well as their minds. As they play, participants tap into the vast reservoir of knowledge stored in each of their own bodies and they become active partners in constructing an understanding. The way that pieces move and feel and sound as you rock them, pedal, crank, press against and listen applies the kinesthetic comprehension's of childhood to the tasks of philosophy.
The use of wood and ancient technologies to examine 21st century issues adds a disarming historical perspective to my enterprise. The pieces are funny, friendly and personal even as they tackle serious issues such as the nature of conscoiusness or the origins of life. The malleable woods I use are ill suited to be machines and yet they do work. Hovering at the line between working and not gives the mechanisms that tenuous yet tenacious character which mirrors control issues in our daily lives. And their very unlikeliness allows each installation to comment on itself.
My work resembles three dimensional Medieval diagrams, mapping questions about our place in the universe. But these are maps of the incompleteness of our knowledge that call for participation and they are diagrams you may literally inhabit.
The use of wood and ancient technologies to examine 21st century issues adds a disarming historical perspective to my enterprise. The pieces are funny, friendly and personal even as they tackle serious issues such as the nature of conscoiusness or the origins of life. The malleable woods I use are ill suited to be machines and yet they do work. Hovering at the line between working and not gives the mechanisms that tenuous yet tenacious character which mirrors control issues in our daily lives. And their very unlikeliness allows each installation to comment on itself.
My work resembles three dimensional Medieval diagrams, mapping questions about our place in the universe. But these are maps of the incompleteness of our knowledge that call for participation and they are diagrams you may literally inhabit.
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