JULIE HENSON
NATALIA GOMEZ


BlindSighted

 


SEPTEMBER 4 -
SEPTEMBER 11, 2010

 

 

 

 



Opening reception: Thursday, September 9, from 6 to 8 pm

The n o m a i n b e t w e e n project series is pleased to present BlindSighted, a show featuring two of the winning works from CCA’s annual media arts juried prize.

Artists Natalia Gomez and Julie Henson both present video works that render the emotional and physical experience contained in certain aspects of mass culture into ecstatic moments.

Natalia Gomez’ video "No Depression in Heaven" and the accompanying drawings are part of an ongoing project dealing with various characters constructed from Casual Encounters in Craigslist. In the artist’s own words: “I have developed an alter ego and have made my world into a movie set. Creating scenarios and subsequently placing them online as ads, to be cast and acted out. This then blurs the lines between reality and fantasy, exploring a physical act of dissociation. I create these scenes and get real people to act them out. The process stems from a place of control that subsequently gets lost, causing the structure to become unscripted. Hidden stories become revealed and I am turned into a socio-anthropologist examining human behavior resulted from very primitive actions whether it is sex, violence, tenderness, intimacy, hate, carnal lust. All the while these Roles begin to shift and, at times, the observer becomes the perpetrator.

In Julie Henson’s project “Wonder”, a short video of a 70’s televangelist dressed as an angel is looped over a piece of sequined fabric, which reflects the color on the opposing wall. What results is a blindingly hypnotic image of an angel floating across the surface of the fabric, throwing moving reflections of color on the wall behind. This work disassembles the intersection of iconoclasm, the spectacle, and systems of belief through the layering of material with the moving image to create a space that immerses the viewer in an all-encompassing spectacle.