Until the possibility of instantaneous selfies via smartphones and digital cameras, mirror was the most important apparatus by which the individual could construct visual identity. Water was humankind's first mirror. Venice, for its part, a city entirely built on water, was renowned since the 15th century for the production of the purest mirrors in the world. They became known as Venetian Mirrors. Venice also lends its name to window shades made of horizontal slats: Venetian Blinds. Blinds cover windows making us blind to the outside. Venetian Reflections reflects upon mirrors, windows, Venice and (self-)identity through an interplay between video and looking glass.
The installation consists of 2 Venetian-style mirrors and 2 video projections (Venetian Watercolors (produced during a residency in Venice at the Emily Harvey Foundation) by Katherine Liberovskaya and Venetian by Phill Niblock). Venetian Watercolors consists of a succession of extreme close-up sequences of the colorful reflections of different details of Venetian architecture in the waters of the many canals of the city. Venetian is a single shot of a close-up of the changing play of morning sunlight reflected on a triple window with closed metallic Venetian blinds seen from the outside (captured from the inside of Niblock's NYC loft).
These large-scale projections immerse viewers in their worlds, while mirrors allow them to see their likeness surrounded by one or the other projection, all fused with the Venetian Reflections…
Works of Bartenev have been extensively exhibited in major museums of modern art, and have been acquired by Russian and foreign galleries, as well as private and corporate collections, such as Расо Rabanne, Andrew Logan, Brian Eno, Zandra Rhodes; Zimmerli Museum Collection, MMOMA, New Academy of Timur Novikov, Museum of Unique Dolls, Tsaritsyno Museum-Reserve.
Intermedia artist using music, film, photography, video and computers. Born in 1933 in Anderson, Indiana. Since the mid-60s he has made thick, loud drones of music, filled with microtones of instrumental timbres which generate many other tones in the performance space. Simultaneously, he presents films/videos which look at the movement of people working, details of nature or black and white abstract still images floating through time. Since 1985, he has been the director of the Experimental Intermedia Foundation NYC. He is the producer of Music and Intermedia presentations at EI since 1973 and the curator of EI's XI Records label. Niblock's music is available on the XI, Moikai, Mode and Touch labels. In 2014, he received the prestigious John Cage Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.