~WAH: Light, Form, and Symbol~ Artist Talk, 23 April 2016

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"Artist's Talk," featuring Sunil Garg, William Norton, and Cornelia Jensen on Saturday, April 23rd, 2016, from 4pm to 6pm. Sunil Garg: 00:42 William Norton: 38:45 Cornelia Jensen 52:44 ~WAH: Light, Form, and Symbol~ http://wahcenter.net/2016/03/wah-light-form-and-symbol/ Curated By Jonathan Judd With Special Thanks to BFP Creative LLC. Saturday, March 26th ~ Saturday, April 23rd, 2016 Opening Reception: Saturday, March 26th, 5 - 8 pm Participating Artists: CHIKA Rachel Chatham Yun-Woo Choi Sunil Garg Takafumi Ide Cornelia Jensen Mieko Mitachi William Norton Carol Salmanson Kirsten Kay Thoen Andrea Wolf Natalia Zubko The WAH Center takes on the continuing and transformative role of light as a structuring formal element in contemporary art. With this exhibition, we look to open up a critical space for the evaluation and consideration of the aesthetic incorporation of lighting technology in art. This continues the WAH Center's technology and art exhibition series, moving from sound with WAH: A New Diversity to light. Ostensibly, this collection of work deals with the use of lighting apparatuses as a purely formal aspect of the art. However, what also becomes manifestly true is lights symbolic and conceptual dimensions: the works explore, overall, the ways in which light structures our perceptions of reality. Adding depth and form to our experience, light comes in to transform the evental moment: traumatic and blaring, soft and sensual, sweeping, dizzying and sublime; light transforms and transmutes. With this exhibition we explore more than just the use of lighting technology as a formal aspect of the work. We also explore the symbolic and discursive significance light signals as a multi-valent term and concept of and in itself. And wrapped up in all this a certain evolution and transmutation of the sculptural object can be seen within “light art.” The chosen works incite a multi-level interrogation: How is light being used as a formal approach? What does it add to the works presence as an aesthetic object? How does light become a symbolic gesture towards a larger personal or societal narrative? In answering these questions we find that light transforms and transmutes; it builds on and reflects the rapid procession of new technology and new social understandings. We have here, then, a momentous relation between subject and object, human and technology: Light, Form and Symbol. In late October 1996, Yuko Nii founded the non-profit The WAH Center (Williamsburg Art & Historical Center) based upon her Bridge Concept. That concept envisions a multifaceted, multicultural art center whose mission is to coalesce the diverse artistic community, and create a bridge between local, national and international artists, emerging and established artists, and artists of all disciplines. Thus through the internatinal language of art we come to understand each other to create a more peaceful and integrated world. The WAH Center is a force for peace and understanding and its concept is incorporated in its acronym: “WAH” in Japanese means “peace” or “harmony” or “unity”. Video by Orin & Sanae Buck http://buckart.com/