Rudy Lemcke: The Transit of Venus
Commissioned by the Institute for Contemporary Art San Jos茅, The Transit of Venus is an installation meant to feel as if the viewer is in a video game with no instructions or controller to navigate their path. It is a game where there is no winning or losing. Rather, the exhibition creates a space that allows the viewer to be on an unsettling threshold between worlds in anticipation of a resolution that never arrives.
The exhibition highlights a video projection based on the Transit of Venus, which happens when Venus passes in front of the bright face of the sun. These transits are among the rarest of observable astronomical events, repeating every 243 years. In the video projection, the yellow sun-like glowing frame is crossed by a red horizontal band of abstract digitally generated animations. A second video loops on a wall monitor that shows the artist walking a tightrope across the frame. Five grid-like paintings span three of the gallery鈥檚 walls and are hung in a descending arc resembling the graphics from early 8-bit video games.
Over the past few years, there has been a growing sense of unease and dissatisfaction with the way we work, with what the media are telling us, and with our broken political system. Disillusioned by technology and its utopian promise, we feel caught in a current of history, unable to swim free.
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Commissioned by the Institute for Contemporary Art San Jos茅, The Transit of Venus is an installation meant to feel as if the viewer is in a video game with no instructions or controller to navigate their path. It is a game where there is no winning or losing. Rather, the exhibition creates a space that allows the viewer to be on an unsettling threshold between worlds in anticipation of a resolution that never arrives.
The exhibition highlights a video projection based on the Transit of Venus, which happens when Venus passes in front of the bright face of the sun. These transits are among the rarest of observable astronomical events, repeating every 243 years. In the video projection, the yellow sun-like glowing frame is crossed by a red horizontal band of abstract digitally generated animations. A second video loops on a wall monitor that shows the artist walking a tightrope across the frame. Five grid-like paintings span three of the gallery鈥檚 walls and are hung in a descending arc resembling the graphics from early 8-bit video games.
Over the past few years, there has been a growing sense of unease and dissatisfaction with the way we work, with what the media are telling us, and with our broken political system. Disillusioned by technology and its utopian promise, we feel caught in a current of history, unable to swim free.
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