| LIVE!November 30, 2006- January 6, 2007Reception: November 30, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Schroeder Romero is pleased to announce LIVE! a solo exhibition of new work by Ted Victoria. Using decidedly low-tech methods such as camera obscuras, lightboxes, lenses and projectors, Victoria creates unique and effective works without resorting to video or other high-tech devices. This is his first solo exhibition with the gallery.
The centerpiece of the exhibition is a sculpture titled Live Bait that employs five projectors to project live images of brine shrimp (popularly known as "sea monkeys") inside a sculpture resembling a cage. The tiny, prehistoric crustaceans are projected up to 50 times their actual size onto the inner surfaces of the structure's opaque plexiglas walls, appearing to be kept captive in their "cage". Viewers will not only see the enlarged projected images of the creatures, but can also see the actual centimeter-long brine shrimp housed in five small aquariums which extend from the top and sides of the sculpture. The translucent shrimp-like creatures swarm to the beams of light produced by the projectors and seem to dance in the luminescence. The brine shrimp are removed each night from the sculpture and kept in an aerated holding tank where they are fed algae and brewer's yeast. Brine shrimp are usually raised by aquarium and pet supply stores to be fed to tropical fish as a live meal.
Also on view will be The Fire Wall Pieces and Street Heat Series. Both series are camera obscura projection boxes mounted on the walls. They look like lightboxes, but instead of using photographic transparencies, the artist creates images with actual objects housed inside the shallow boxes and an ingenious system of mirrors, lights and lenses. Images of the various components are reflected and projected from various locations inside the box to appear on a small plexiglas screen on the box's front. The resulting image is a photographic-like moving image. The Fire Wall Pieces are inspired by the trance-like effect gazing at fire has on the viewer. The illusion of fire and objects "burning", but never being consumed, are similar to that found in an artificial fireplace.
Ted Victoria is a professor of Fine Arts at Kean University in Union, New Jersey. He has participated in exhibitions internationally including the Galerie Bonnier in Geneva, Fortuny Museum in Venice, Museum of Contemporary art, Taipei, Musee D'Orsay in Paris and the International Museum of Photography, George Eastman House in Rochester. This exhibition was made possible in part with a released time grant from Kean University.
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