The Sylvia Wald and Po Kim Gallery invites you to our ARTIST TALK with Natalia Kolodzei Tuesday, April 30th, 2024 | 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM

TIME IS LIGHT : Alexandra Dementieva, Anna Frants, and Raphaele Shirley MARCH 6 – MAY 18, 2024 ARTIST TALK with Natalia Kolodzei Tuesday, April 30th, 2024 | 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM   SWPK THE SYLVIA WALD & PO KIM GALLERY 417 LAFAYETTE STREET, 2ND FLOOR, NYC RSVP FOR OPENING

The Sylvia Wald and Po Kim Gallery invites you  to our Artist Talk on Tuesday, April 30th, which is held as part of the exhibition, Time Is Light, on view through May 18, 2024. Three media artists, Alexandra Dementieva, Anna Frants and Raphaele Shirley will discuss their works with moderator Natalia Kolodzei.

Time Is Light offers an exploration of the kinetic relationship between its two titular elements, featuring installations by three distinguished multimedia artists. In its usage of colors, luminosity, interactions, reflections, and movements of light, this installation opens a portal, evoking transient yet poignant moments. The works of these artists endeavor to celebrate the innate ability embedded in light for storytelling, communication, and affecting emotional change. Before scientists sought to systematize its behavior, and certainly before its existence was understood as an unsolvable problem in the world of quantum physics, light had already been heavily examined throughout history, as its natural mysticism allowed it a central role in many global mythological systems. Though contemporary society has all but disregarded a theology hinged upon deities of light reigning over the Earth, there remain lingering traces of this transcendence. This spectacular nature of light is central to the installations in Time Is Light. In these works, light is at once a medium through which time can be reflected and the means through which emotional and political change is allowed to occur.

Alexandra Dementieva, Breathless, 2024, Interactive installation, 39.37 x 39.37 x 78.74 inches

Alexandra Dementieva's Breathless imagines light as a function of time in the present moment, mapping online linguistic trends in real time. By allowing the glow of installation's lights to be altered when a participant breathes into an attached sensor, Dementieva emphasizes the malleability of the political landscape, as well as the agency of the human subject within it.

Anna Frants, Stories of Light, 2024, Robotics, flip books, pencil drawings and led lights, Dimensions varied

Anna Frants' contributions from her series Simple Pleasures, trace the moving image historically. These "stories of light" provide contemporary reanimations of one of humanity's oldest aspirations: capturing movement, and thus time, in light. Through moving images, Frants evokes a tradition which has evolved over millennia from the age of cave paintings and shadow puppets to the modern era of film, camera, and digital animation.

Raphaele Shirley, 3 Tone Ephemeral with sound composition by Rhys Chatham, 2024, Mixed Media, 240 x 48 x 144 inches

3 Tone Ephemeral, a sculpture in light by Raphaele Shirley, celebrates the vibrancy of time as experienced through the present moment. Light here intonates emotion and underlines duration through its sequential appearance of alternating wavelengths. Integrated into the piece are original compositions by minimalist composer Rhys Chatham. His sounds interplay with the color fields in an open-ended sequence. The installation envelops the viewer in an evolving sensorial environment through the weaving loop of colors and sounds, at once expansive and minimal.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS Alexandra Dementieva is a multidisciplinary artist born in Moscow and based in Brussels whose work incorporates sculpture, dance, music, cinema, and performance. Her installations demonstrate an interest in both technology and human psychology.         Anna Frants is an internationally acclaimed new media artist, curator, and art writer born in Leningrad, USSR and currently residing in Miami. She is a co-founder of the CYLAND Media Art Lab and the CYLAND Foundation, and is a leading voice in cultural dialogue surrounding experimental art. Born in Wisconsin and based in New York, Raphaele Shirley is an internationally recognized multi-media artist. Her oeuvre is an amalgam of sculpture, light, public art, and performance which sits at the intersection of art and technology. Through her work she explores the topics of physics, civilization through time, and finitude of existence.

ABOUT Natalia Kolodzei Natalia Kolodzei is an art curator and historian. Ms. Kolodzei is Executive Director of the Kolodzei Art Foundation established in 1991, and, along with Tatiana Kolodzei, owner of the Kolodzei Collection of Eastern European Art, containing over 7,000 artworks (paintings, sculptures, works on paper, photography, kinetic and digital art) by over 300 artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. Ms. Kolodzei has curated over eighty art exhibitions in the US, Europe and Russia. She is an author and editor of multiple publications and organized and contributed to symposiums and panel discussions for universities and museums worldwide.

ABOUT SWPK SWPK—The Sylvia Wald and Po Kim Art Gallery— is a non-profit art foundation committed to promoting East-West cultural exchange through the arts by sponsoring and hosting art exhibitions of national and international artists. For more information visit: swpk.org Time Is Light is produced in collaboration with the Donghwa Cultural Foundation.

SWPK - The Sylvia Wald & Po Kim Art Gallery 417 Lafayette Street, 2nd Floor New York, NY 10003 Phone: 212.598.1155 Email: info@waldandkimgallery.org #sylviawaldpokimartgallery#fineartmagazine#fineartfun