january 10 becoming bird: an artists perspective
Details
Thursday, January 10 4 pm
Centro Cultural El Nigromante (Bellas Artes) Hernández Macías 75
free event
Becoming Bird – Artist’s Statement
Found birds
Their stunning beauty and articulated gestures.
Wasted by the proliferation of human excess?
Whose bellies might be swollen with plastic shards of “food”?
Or befallen by reflections in glass …
A deceptive promise of a continuation that ends on impact?
In my studio
I let these dead birds talk.
The act of this collaboration
This exploring, touching and seeing
Has sharpened my awareness and dissolved my sense of other.
Devenir Ave -becoming bird
Gallery Talk and Reception
Thursday, January 10, 4 pm
By: Hope Palmer
What does one expect to see and feel when one enters a world both known and unknown. A world where birds are the main protagonists in photo and video artist Linda Girvin’s new works “Devenir Ave – Becoming Bird” at the Centro Cultural El Nigromante (Bellas Artes). The visual assault, the “grab”, is immediate and most likely overwhelming; asking more questions and involving the viewer in a way usually not present in art, especially of a subject that seems at once so knowable in our visual heritage, that of birds.
Moving beyond the static bird portraits of John James Audubon’s era, Girvin engages the interplay between the light and pace of 21st century scanner technology, the bodies of found birds and her intuitive touch to dissolve boundaries and transcend “still life”. Her images draw us into the realms of life and death, love and sorrow and the fine line between perceived reality and the dimensions of the spirit.
Particles of realism within the large format works tease us into a false sense of understanding only to be blasted away in the next instant by the transition of recognizable talons, beaks and wings into abstract imagery. It is confrontational work, intended to help us move to a place of emotional connection with the aspects of life and death that can never be explained through intellectual reasoning.
The best works in art are somewhat ambiguous and poetic. They never release meaning upon first viewing; for it is only when we put ourselves in a personal space, meeting the subject so directly without outside interference that revelation awaits. Once we suspend logic and let the spontaneity of the moment prevail we have entered Girvin’s world.
On Thursday, January 10 at 4 pm, Linda will host a gallery talk and reception at the Centro Cultural El Nigromante (Bellas Artes) that will take us to a deeper understanding of the collaborative process she uses to create these works and how this focus has shifted her relationship with the non-human world.
Linda Girvin, Photo and Video Artist
Linda Girvin is a photo-based and video artist who lives and works in Aspen, Colorado and San Miguel de Allende. She has had numerous museum and one-person shows around the country as well as Germany, The Netherlands and China. Collections and museums that have acquired her work include the Progressive Art Collection, The Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the Norton Museum of Art in Florida and the U.S. Department’s Art in The Embassies Program. Her exhibition at Centro Cultural El Nigromante (Bellas Artes) continues through January 13, 2019.
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