So far, 2016 has been an exciting year for our featured artist Lita Albuquerque. In addition to 20/20: Accelerando, she has been working on an exhibition for Kohn Gallery, Embodiment, on view through February 26, 2016.
Albuquerque’s exhibition at Kohn Gallery consists predominantly of paintings that play with the viewer’s perception. The pigments of color have rare qualities of light that reflect, absorb, and refract light. Further highlighting the exhibition’s vibratory sense of space are three long parallel deposits of salt. Salt, a mineral coming from the sea and sediments of dry lakebeds, possesses a different quality of light than those particles of pigment in Albuquerque’s paintings. These installations are navigational, not only for the viewers but also for the light particles that enter Albuquerque’s spiritual universe.
Salt, a pivotal element also used in 20/20: Accelerando, carries significant value as it interactively alters Fisher’s west gallery. The 7-ton-blanket of salt installed underneath the projection wall serves as a bridge that possesses and distributes the information carried by the light of projections, imposing a new dimension to the relationship between the audience and the film.
For 20/20: Accelerando, Albuquerque worked closely with artist and composer Robbie C. Williamson. Together, they have adapted GenIus Remembered, a text Albuquerque began in 2003, into 20/20: Accelerando, a hypnotic film installation that melds myth, nature and sound. 20/20: Accelerando transforms Fisher Museum’s galleries into dark immersive spaces that picture the majesty of the natural world as well as the poetry of human consciousness.
Tracing the relationship between humanity and the cosmos, 20/20: Accelerando follows the journey of a 25th century female astronaut in the year 6,000 BCE on a mission to spread interstellar consciousness. Crash-landing onto Earth, she forgets her mission, prompting her to embark on a journey of remembrance and self-discovery.
20/20: Accelerando marks Albuquerque’s historic return to Fisher for the first time since the 1983 exhibition, Abhasa: Image Bearing Light, a collaboration with architect Robert Kramer and composer Harold Budd.
20/20: Accelerando is on view through April 10, 2016.