MULTIMEDIA INSTALLATION

 

Press release

Deconstructed Cities/Deconstructed Reality, 2001-2006

 

16+ synchronized channels video, HD format
Computer-coded animation loop, color,
approximate duration 15 minutes each channel
Soundtrack by the artist 
Series 30+ photograph unrelated to video production
Project includes large-scale photographs dedicated to megapolises of the world;
( London, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, New York and Madrid)


Aesthetically the project is based on aspiration to analyze contemporary human environment, which has its architectural counterpoint in big cities. The video channels contain images of New York City deconstructed and re-assembled into a new virtual reality. The future projects will incorporate similar metamorphoses for the other megalopolises that are distinctly characteristic in their architectural style and national culture. They will include metropolitan Berlin, Tokyo, London, Paris, Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro, and many others.

Deconstructed Reality arrives also as a development of the artist's state of uncertainty. Within the assumption that reality is unknowable, he makes an emphasis on fragmentation of reality, as opposed to his identity in the earlier Desire and Vertigo artworks. In Deconstructed Reality, the artist finds no stable ego, only a series of different roles; he finds his own reflection in many subjects, and finds himself as a site of competing discourses.

For White-Sobieski, perception of reality is a construction and/or a game, and at the times of intellectual or emotional crises, his reality falls apart "deconstructed". This series is thoroughly postmodern in the sense that it transforms the medium of art – permanent and transcendental - into multiplicity and anonymity. The video locks the audience into transformations of the image and embraces the avant-garde of disruptive approach (long ago present in Duchamp's work).

Deconstructed Reality has an aesthetic unity in its urban experience. In an attempt to prove that art could restrain life's chaos, the artist shows that the art does not create order, but entwines into life's paradoxes. He suspends belief and disbelief in coherent daily continuity, and makes reality available to us as a series of discourses.

Video channels are projected from the 16 high definition projectors positioned in a site-specific composition on the ceiling of the exhibition space, onto large-scale semi-translucent acrylic screens. Additional elements of the installation include video channels positioned near floor level and large-scale photographs displayed in neighboring spaces.
The acrylic screens can be observed from both sides, from the front and from the rear.

 

 

 

© 2003