The Heat Is On
We are well into August, and things are really heating up here at the Brooklyn Museum. Six artists will be coming to the Museum this week to install their works for Infinite Island: Contemporary Caribbean Art – joining us from as nearby as Manhattan, and as far away as Haiti, Curacao, and Suriname! With just 18 days until the opening of this exhibition, we are moving quickly.
Last week we welcomed Charles Campbell, a Jamaican-born artist living in Canada, who was here to install his work Aperture – Middle Passage. The installation of this work began with a transparency, which the artist first projected onto a wall (see image below):
Artist Charles Campbell centers the projection of his work Aperture – Middle Passage.
Once projected and sized, the image was painted directly onto the wall using tempera paint. It is roughly 13 feet high and took the artist three days to complete.
Campbell paints the projected image onto the wall.
Using geometric patterns and symmetry in this piece, Campbell fuses the image of the mandala, the traditional Buddhist and Hindu symbol associated with harmony and equilibrium, with that of a slave ship, representing violence and suffering. In combining these two opposing ideas, Campbell’s work aims to confront and reconcile the past.
Detail from Charles Campbell’s Aperture – Middle Passage.
I won’t show you the finished work – yet. You’ll have to visit the exhibition to see it….
Hank:
August 14th, 2007 at 11:15 am
It’s fun to see how it all gets done. Thanks for keeping an eye on things.
Carol:
August 14th, 2007 at 8:12 pm
It’s so interesting to learn how some of these pieces get done and then end up on the wall. So much time and effort go into each work of art. You have to admire the resourcefulness of each artist.I think that the process is as important as the finished product.
Thank you for giving us a ,behind the scenes, glimpse.
THERTUS:
August 17th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
Please educate me, i always have a problem with artists who project their image onto the wall or canvas to paint. My point is i feel the artist takes a shortcut on his gift of perception. It’s like a shortcut, or like they are copying something. I like the concept of the piece, it’s just the process that bothers me. I’m looking forward to seeing the show….
Tamara Schechter:
August 20th, 2007 at 11:55 am
Thanks for the comment, Thertus. This reminds me, many of the artists in Infinite Island will participate in an online Q&A while the exhibition is on view. Check back to learn more about the ideas and techniques represented in the show – perhaps you can pose your question directly to the artists!
Nicholas Lujan:
January 6th, 2010 at 11:13 am
There is a gentleman in Curacao who lives aside the ocean. His eyes are clear as the sea waters and, like the ocean, he is stubborn. his name is Bert Knubben.(64) He is on the beach of the BREEZES Holiday Resort and a craftsman of the privileged “kings” black coral jewellery which he stubbornly insist must be written black “koral”. A solid touch, since the initials are his own and in Curacao, he is synonymous with this valuable stone which he painstakingly makes in his tiny shop, the KORALART gallery, together with his pretty wife Fennie, on the palm sands of the Breezes Resort Hotel.