Professor Ryann Cooley’s solo show, Kinesthesia Room (2), opens at the Olean Center Gallery on Friday, April 20 at 6:00 p.m.
Kinesthesia Room (2), designed to engage the present viewer, is an immersive environment constructed on site. In a darkened room, projected video footage reflects from 54 strips of metal suspended from the ceiling. These reflective strips, stirred by the motion of viewers, cast light dancing on the bare gallery walls.
Installation art such as Kinesthesia Room (2) diverges from traditional two-dimensional media such as photography. Rather than an experience which draws viewers out of themselves and their sense of space, installation art allows them to physically enter the piece, and activates awareness of the space it occupies. In Cooley’s recent piece, the projected video footage is fragmented by multiple moving reflective strips. The dynamism of moving footage and abstracted reflections, as well as a sound component, requires the viewer to center their senses in the present to engage with the piece and make sense of the obfuscated information orbiting and immersing them.
Cooley’s upcoming show is the second iteration of the Kinesthesia Room, which was first shown in a 12’ x 12’ space in the Visual Arts Gallery in NYC. A viewer’s account of Kinesthesia Room (1) had a strong physical and emotional reaction to the piece.
“Upon entering this darkened environment, solely visible by the movement of an ethereal luminance, my spatial and physical awareness becomes obfuscated. As I slowly move around the space, color, light and sounds modulate,” reads the statement, found on Cooley’s website. “What appears to be an object central to my surroundings becomes inaccessible at moments and then obtainable at others. Everything is in motion.”
Houghton students are invited to make a pilgrimage to the Olean Center Gallery to engage with the experience he has created in Kinesthesia Room (2). The way you experience the piece is up to you – and your body. Some people have been dazzled, some have become meditative, and others have felt vertiginous dizziness amid the dynamic light and sound.
Kinesthesia Room (2) opens on Friday, April 20th from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at the Olean Center Gallery, and runs through May 25, 2018. A Houghton shuttle will be bringing a group of art majors and minors to the opening, and all students are welcome at the show.
Contact Ellen Hatch at Ellen.Hatch@houghton.edu to inquire about shuttle availability.