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"The Lotus City" by Huang.

This year’s Digital & Video Art Fair (DiVA) was an exciting event with a taste a little out of the ordinary. Sensory overload - from multimedia projections, short film clips and video graphics to highly conceptualized video installations; talent is before us, and streaming.

Galleries lined the 5th floor of the Embassy Suites hotel. Entering room after room my attention was split in two, sometimes more, as streaming videos were displayed in abundance. Earphones were jacked into flat screen TV’s or hand held DVD players. The sounds were not at all what you would expect from the imagery playing in front of you - these artists have purposefully engaged our senses of sight and sound to elicit our response.

While each work of art was expressive and engaging, I hadn’t found anything unique. I was seeing a typical display of video installations. But with patience and determination I visited each room waiting for something to strike my chord of beauty, imagination and wonder.

"Cage 187"
Troy Abbott.

It was the work of Huang Hsin-Chien, presented by Galerie Grand Siecle of Taiwan, that grabbed me tightly and pulled me into a world of utter fascination. “Actias Luna” consists of 4 digital sculptures made up of two-dozen or so single panes of glass, evenly spaced one behind the other. On each pane are digitally etched fragments of the image and written text, which wouldn’t make sense unless viewed in sequential slices. What we see is three dimensional, illuminated by light from behind exposing this suspended world in space and time.

In the small confines of the bathroom, another digital sculpture of Huang’s radiated above the tile floor. At first what appearing to be an uprooted flower, it quickly unfolds before me as a “miniature specimen of a city” coexisting under the splendor of a pink lotus. Huang’s latest piece was a jolt - a 6-foot tall video booth of a virtual woman with an 8-inch dildo springing back and forth. It looked like a big video sex game console ready to be played, so it comes as no surprise that Huang has an extensive background in video gaming.

Most of the artwork at DiVA played with the realities of today’s progressively artificial society. Some solely expressed social and cultural issues. Nevertheless, with the digital age ever growing, one artist set out to test our awareness of these realities and the growing effect of our conditioning with modern technology.

Troy Abbot, at DiVA with Art Futures in Miami, Florida, masterfully plays with our minds and our perception of reality. Viewing his “Cage 187,” I saw a black birdcage with a beautiful bird perched up on its swing. Below the bird was a small CPU board with exposed wires crawling up the cage. The door was open but the bird was content inside and never tried to escape, for it was just a recording being displayed on a tiny LCD screen.

Abbot experiments with the illusion of reality in the form of modern technology, yet what struck me the most about the work was its practicality. Having always felt that a drawback to video installations as marketable art was the fact that I could never take a piece home and display it on my wall. I was pleasantly proven wrong by Abbot.

As I continued down the corridor, the visual experiences began to blend themselves into one another and the music was beginning to give me a headache. In spite of this, it was surprising to hear the gallery owner’s opinions about DiVA. Apparently the show had comprised of 2 floors last year, but this year was confined to one. Some of the gallery owners expressed their concerns, stating that the fair was poorly organized, and there had not been enough traffic - nothing is more disappointing than poor attendance. However, in the end I was very pleased to attend DiVA, and walked out to a gorgeous Manhattan under a fresh blanket of snow.

Links:

www.troyabbot.com
www.storynest.com (Huang Hsin-Chien)

by Anthony DiSalvo