Luminous Flux

Photographic installation by Ansen Seale
December 11 through January 18, 2011
Opening reception December 11, 6:30-8:30 pm

Is a wave formed from the water within? No, the wave moves across the water. And is the artist his art?

Ansen Seale, in new work showing at Kirk Hopper Fine Art, delves into a world accessible only through the machine he has created. A special designed digital camera records only things that move or change. Water is the main subject, but water is here a medium for reflection and transmission of imagery. The resulting realism and abstraction co-exist in a swirling vortex of color and light.

"Luminous Flux" records hidden realities beneath the surface of our everyday visual experience, by way of a unique device. States the artist, "Over the past 10 years, I have pursued a little-known technique called slitscan photography. Far from being just a visual curiosity, it has become a substantial tool for the exploration of themes meaningful to me. I have found slitscan photography to be an excellent vehicle for ideas central to my work, ideas about time and our place in its continuum.

"It is important to understand that these images are not manipulated. This is the way my camera sees the world. Rather than suspending a single moment, my photography examines the passage of time. In my modern version of the panoramic camera, a single sliver of space is imaged over an extended period of time, yielding the surprising result that unmoving objects are blurred and moving bodies are rendered clearly. The model in the studio must move in order to be captured. In the Water series, the stones in the river do not move, and so, become stripes. The water flowing past them perturbs their static image, creating a kind of color field painting. This is no trick. This is photography in the purist sense."

Also showing in Gallery B
Drawings by Frank X. Tolbert 2
"During the forty years of my career as an artist I have worked in a narrative style. I work with graphite, oil stick, oil paint, and watercolors. I consider myself a 'drawer' regardless of the medium. The marks I make are my emotional responses to what is going on around me. My work is about the mundane, the real, the surreal and the absurdities of life on Earth."