Thurs, May 7th: GABRIEL MELLAN: A RETROREFLECTIVE

Thursday May 7, 2015
6 - 9 pm

The experience:

Contrasting the traditional gallery viewing experience, the lights will be off, use the flash on your smartphone to photograph the work. A third LED eye will be provided for you to illuminate the art and navigate the space. This exhibition is kid friendly, assuming they are a bit adventurous and can handle a cameraphone. Selfies and flash photography are encouraged.

How it works:

The auto exposure and autofocus feature on smartphones work to make these pieces visible. The autofocus involves a short burst of light to help the camera focus in the dark. When the light to help focus the camera hits the retroreflective surfaces and is bounced back, the camera reads the environment to have more light than there is. The auto-exposure of the camera adjusts and the photograph is taken making the reflective portions white and the rest of the image black. 

Each of us is a curator to the gallery we own on social media. We edit, frame and add filters to images; we can spend more time processing an image of our life than actually living our life.

Cameras and screens serve as portals into the experiences of those around us. We have the ability to visually document and quickly disseminate images and video. These devices we use to document interrupt our physical interaction with artwork; we focus on images of art rather than the art itself.

When artwork is photographed, it is evidence of the viewer’s engagement with it, yet the focus is often shifted to favor the device needed to process and document. It’s in this particular shift of interaction that this series of work is created for. Here, this otherwise disruptive relationship is integral to the experience: the camera flash illuminates the pieces, revealing the artwork. 

The brow chakra or third eye is used in our perception of environments, people and art. Just as the camera interrupts our physical interaction with the work, a LED placed on the third eye obstructs our chakra yet Illuminates the artwork. Both the camera and the LED on the forehead act as extraneous devices but are fused to our physical self we experience this art installation. Our visual senses are activated through an external portal and apparatus of which the art relies upon. 

Through May 21, 2015
Curated by Caitlin McGarry

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Growing up has always been an adventure for Gabriel Mellan. With his childhood divided up in Washington DC, Hawaii and Tokyo, the transient and multi-cultural experiences have continued on into his adulthood. Focusing his art making on interactive sculpture and installations involving sound, motion and light, his work is fueled by material, process and minimalistic forms. Gabriel is a graduate of the Corcoran College of Art + Design and is teaching and making art in the D.C. area. His sculpture, installations and photography have been published and exhibited in China, Japan and the U.S. 
http://www.gabrielmellan.com/