The day the museums closed for the COVID-19 pandemic on the day the San Diego Museum of Art installed a new exhibition through the new artist Cauleen Smith, a video animated through an early 17th-century masterpiece from the museum’s collection, “Dead Nature with Quinces” to Juan Sánchez CotonArrayu Chou Chou Chou Chou Chou Chou Melon and Cucumber. “
And when other museums in Balboa Park were to reopen briefly in early July before the last construction in instances and the mandatory closure, the SDMA did not have the possibility to open.
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Now founded in Los Angeles, Smith, a filmmaker and interdisciplinary artist, learned to love this express still life from Coton when he lived in San Diego. After connecting with SDMA, Smith began creating an immersive exhibition, “Mystical Time and Deceptive Light,” and a video installation, “Flori Sing, 2020,” to discuss with The Painting of Coton.
Smith then sought to concentrate on the small tactics in which portraying deceives the viewer. “We had many conversations about the shadows of the object, the kind of impossibility to portray. You can’t see much. You can’t see where the rope hangs. You can’t see how smooth the source is,” Smith said. “The shadows don’t make sense.”
Contemporary virtual and video paintings have gained more than the passing attention of SDMA in recent years. His main exhibition in 2018 of artist Tim Shaw’s paintings included a revolutionary use of video, synthetic intelligence and generation. Last year, the museum installed an immersive video installation of a complete room through Nick Roth that the generation used to mimic the brushstrokes of the old masters’ paintings down the hall.
“As we know, generation is the existing language,” said SDMA EXECUTIVE Director Roxana Velasquez, and emphasized that it makes art more available to other generations. “Technology is what allows you, as you saw with Nick Roth, to play. Enjoy and expand,” Velasquez said.
Smith’s installation is also an immersive delight in a full room: only his audience has not yet been submerged. She designed the piece to wrap the viewer, featuring “Dead Nature with quince, cabbage, melon and cucumber” through Coton, as well as a giant screen with her 30-minute loop video. SDMA made the video online, as well as an exhibition tour, until the museum could welcome visitors in person.
The video draws attention to Coton’s void. In his studio, Smith built the shelf from the board, however productive he can. “The shelf seen in the portrait may not exist in real life; it’s too steep. If I ever tried to install the painting in real life, it would be impossible,” Smith said.
“The black void is still there,” Smith said of Coton’s dead life series. “In the maximum paintings, he puts things in front of him. It darkens them.” Smith said that in these Coton paintings at SDMA, vacuum is more present. Smith chose to put him in the spotlight in his game.
Aside from the bookshelf, Smith left the frame almost empty, highlighting the negative area of Coton’s work as well as the sound of his studio. Daily steps and noises can be heard in the studio, as well as, like a clock, bursts of music with women who make a song about nature: Mary J. Blige, Roberta Flack, Nina Simone and more, every five minutes.
Much of Smith’s inspiration comes not only from the interior of the painting, but also from Coton’s paintings and life. He gave up his social life and joined a monastery. “There are many hypotheses that even still lifes asked non-secular questions. I thought, well, a more meditative technique is the way forward,” Smith said.
As he left his studio to enroll in the monastery, he left a complete account of what was in his study. This express list made Smith need to anchor his paintings in his studio, hence the studio’s ambient noise and even the artist’s appearance at some point.
In the end, the video strangely abandons the setup of the shelf and leaves its audience in a bright, lively and moving nature: the flowers sway with the breeze, a hummingbird revels in ripe fruit. Smith said he went from micro to macro, reading the concept of suspended food and resting impossiblely in the image as living examples of food supply.
“I have this lawn in my backyard where I can watch things grow, die or a mixture of everything. It turns out that at the same time, this quiet interiority proposed by Coton, there is also the global of life,” he said. Blacksmith.
The resulting portraits take elements and stories locked in a centuries-old portrait and bring the art of Juan Sánchez Coton and Smith’s strange, meditative, evocative and reassuring portraits to a fashionable audience, online for now, but Smith expects the audience to immerse themselves in the portraits. user soon.
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