Intensity: Animated Trilogy
Per Larson, NY art critic
Imagine a painting come to life.
Lazarus painting.
This work brings to mind the three dimensional tours of museums and historic sites imagined by those always inventive Hungarians.
A painting awakening. The inner, often hidden life of a painting given form, given expression.
Imagine a new art form that fulfilled all of the intentions of the hologram and putting all the implementations attempted via holograms to date to shame.
This is not Disney, Anime, animation, Hollywood – this is art, every minute of its new life, every minute it comes alive. These are not those infinitely boring movies you so often see in dark rooms at the Whitney or MOMA museums in New York – those cute experiences which often leave you as much embarassed for the artist as unsatisfied.
What is the experience I am having so much trouble putting into words? You sit on a museum bench looking at a painting on a wall. It’s quite a good painting, interesting, in balance, pleasing. It has invited you to sit and take it in.
Then the lights in the room dim and the painting seems to have been replaced by a square of light. Moving images, ever changing geometric forms, take flight from their base form in what had been a painting and what is now an experience. It’s as if a litho by M.C. Escher had come alive. In fact the painting has come alive. Its basic forms and shapes are all transformed into moving entities – they are now alive. The painting is now an experience. It’s partly as if we have seen all the different versions the painting had in its journey to being the painting we saw on the wall. Except it’s more, for the painting of the paint is no longer with paint but with electronic imaging tools – with color, form and the combinations of its elements moving as if we are now inside the artist’s mind as she explores the possible new ways the static imagine can move and become alive. And then a figure slowly comes into the field of view, ghost like at first, then clearly a beautifull, mysterious being – just comes into this cauldron of changing shapes, colors and forms – and by her presence appears to settle it until we are left with her in a new painting – that then slowly disappears and dissolves as the lights come on and we are back in Flatland – which now is what painting is like for us. In some ways at first we feel we are ruined, spoiled – we yearn to return to that created world. And then gradually the painting again becomes real – what it was before – except now it is informed by an unforgettable experience. We have seen it come alive. Painting Come Alive.
At every moment the painting stays painted, imagined, created. It’s as if the artist has invited us to sit for awhile with her in her mind, in this imagined universe she has magically given life to. I was rapt with attention, I forgot all time – for as with all magic moments the length of time spent in these worlds matters not one bit.
This is painting through the looking glass. We are invited and shown by the artist to walk into her painted world and experience it come alive.
The is an art wormhole, taking us in but an instant from Flatland to Imaginedland where paint becomes clay in which life has been breathed.
These are ageless, ancient, archetypal beings, an ageless, ancient archtetypal universe.
We are forever changed for the experience. In a few moments this imagined being has installed herself in my mind – like some immensely captivating person we’ve had but a few magic moments with she has become part of the very special people life has introduced into my life. I don’t think I shall ever forget her.
This is what art is supposed to do, what artists are put on this planet to do. The best art, the best artists. Who have been able to breathe life into clay since mankind painted on cave walls. But now that imagined universe has come alive. This artist has the ability to invite us into her imagined universe, show us around, introduce us to who lives there, and tell us her story. Stunning.
I feel so lucky I have accidentally discovered this on a street in Buenos Aires, in its oldest gallery. Now with the benefit of hindsight I am not surprised this should be the Bethlehem of this new form of life, this new way of living informed by art.
For the best art seizes us by the throat, grabs us by the genitals and enables us to shove aside the everyday for the special, destroys our externals so we can at last center ourselves in life’s core, invites us into a new imagined world, introduces us to utterly unimaginable magical beings.
But the best art is but a glimpse of this new world the artist has seen. At best art and artists use paint as a new language to talk about these new worlds, these magical beings. Imagine being able to enter the this world, live in it, look around, experience it – and finally get it.
Painting come alive. Imagine a painting come alive.
We have not been given just a picture, we have been given an experience. The result is transformative, a conversation. We have just met someone new, someone who could just as well come from another world, another planet – who just stepped into our lives for a few splendid moments – as did perhaps the person we fell in love with in those magic moments, that brief splendid eternal yet short experience where love was born.
I fell in love with this new being, as much as people all over the world have fallen in love with ET. An imagined being, a few lines, some color, a bit of texture, moving into our field of view, moving into our lives. In a few moments we accept and embrace her as magically as we embraced those few persons we have fallen in love with, also in but a few moments, in the ancient experience of our own lives. With one big difference: we can repeat this experience of discovery, magic, wonder, and awe – over and over and over – and somehow, like the repeated moments since with someone we fell in love with so long ago, it is always fresh, always vivid, and inexplicably calm and peaceful.
The painter in one imaginative step outside of painting has not just invented a new art form, she has discovered a new race, a new genus, a new family of beings – and given us the experience of living for but a few magic moments in an entirely unique and different universe. As if we had time travelled to a new and wonderful world.
Imagine a painting that actually tells a story – without ever ceasing to be a painting
This awakening recalls those marvelous films of Picasso painting on clear glass, enabling us to see the birth of a painting. This achievement by xx xx enables us to see the life of a painting, to see and be a part of its life’s story.
Awakened painting. That’s as close as I can get at this point to labelling this new genre. Painting awakened. It’s as if a painting awoke, Lazarus like, and got up, moved into our lives – as alive as we the viewer are.
A work of art brought alive, become alive, achieved through two years of work.
One bright idea transformed into a brilliant idea.
Just as God or some thing equally mystical – The Force of Star Wars – transforms clay in a chemical cauldron billions of years ago into something living and breathing called life this artist has touched and transformed paint breathing life into it now. Both result in moments of profound awe.
I found myself using the words imagine, wonder, magic, transformed, awe – and yet all words fail to describe the imagined very much alive world and beings of this magical universe that leaves us in awe.
Lastly, this achievement marks the moment when the computer has become the core tool of a new and genuine art form. This achievement is only possible with the painting tools electronics now make possible. In fact this blows apart the boundaries of not just painting but music and cinema as well.
All uses of the computer up to now have been amateur, hokey or just plain commercial. This artist has made electronics an additional painting tools as real as her brushes and pigments. The question up to now has been not can machines think – but can they enable us to think better. The question has now gone to an entirely new level: not can machines imagine and create living beings – but can they enable artists to better imagine. The answer is a thundering yes.
