Exhibition Dates: January 3 – February 28, 2015
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 3 from 6–8 pm
Gallery Location: Arthur Roger Gallery New Media Space, 432 Julia Street, New Orleans, LA 70130
Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 10am – 5pm
Contact Info: 504.522.1999; www.arthurrogergallery.com
The Arthur Roger Gallery is pleased to present Circulation of Light, a mixed media installation by Courtney Egan. The exhibition will be on view in the Arthur Roger Gallery new media exhibition space, located at 432 Julia Street, from January 3 – February 28, 2015. The gallery will host an opening reception with the artist in attendance, Saturday, January 3 from 6-8 pm.
Crystal Gazers, 2014. Forged metal, cast glass, wire, HD video projection. 35 x 60 x 8 inches.
Circulation of Light is Courtney Egan’s third exhibition with the gallery. The installation features three distinct projection-based works, which meld technology with nature. Crystal Gazers features groupings of cast glass medallions infused with light from a single channel projection cascading from forged metal branches. Fountain is a wall-mounted collection of cast glass “bottles” with projected water spilling from one to the next. In both works, the surface and depth of the glass break up the images and add dimension to the otherwise flat projection. Finally, Dreamcatcher is a motion-activated video projection offering the viewer the experience of witnessing the budding and then contraction of a single bloom.
Inspired by the growing frequency of human exposure to nature via computers or television, Egan creates stunning yet “subtly impossible, hybrid tableaus” which envelope the viewer in a conversation between memory of the natural world and a new experience with a plant or flower. She explains the fundamental irony of the experience, stating, “We get closer and farther away from the natural world simultaneously when we experience it through a technological lens.”
Courtney Egan holds a Master of Fine Arts from Maryland Institute College of Art. She has screened short films at many festivals, including the New Orleans Film Festival, New York Underground Film Festival, MadCat Women’s International Film Festival, Kasseler Dokumentarfilm & VideoFest, the Black Maria Film Festival and the Ann Arbor Film Festival, where in 2004 her film The Chaos Hags received the Isabella Liddell Award for women’s issues in film. She was an artist-in-residence at the Santa Fe Art Institute and at Louisiana Artworks in New Orleans. She is a founding member of the New Orleans-based visual arts collective Antenna. She has taught art and media in elementary, secondary, and college classrooms since 1991. Courtney is currently a Media Arts faculty member at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA).