Friday January 5th 8pm $10 suggested donation
Please join us on January 5th as Baltimore artist Dan Conrad brings some much-needed light and color into our world with his first ever DC exhibition.
“Light painting” describes a luminous display with a fixed pattern, where the chromatic relationships between color areas change. Colored light sources illuminate the diffusing surface. Partitions behind the screen create edges between color areas. An electronic controller causes areas to change color.
My original work with color-changing light art was “color performance,” in which I manipulated dimmers to create color changes on a screen. My instrument, the “chromaccord”, is usually performed in concert with a musician. Color changes can be fast, invoking color after-images, and the experience can become abrasive. A light painting, in contrast, is intended to exist in a living space, calling for different considerations of its psychological impact. I design them to operate slowly; sometimes color changes are almost imperceptible. The medium plays with changes in color associations between shapes, changes in degrees of simultaneous contrast, and changes in the overall appearance of a piece after one looks away for a time.
Painting on paper and canvas presents challenges that differ from light painting. While painting offers immediacy and texture not available with light painting, it can serve as a testing area for visual ideas. Some design skills carry from one medium to the other.
As an artist working with a time-based medium, I also continue my interest in music. I have played flute, on and off, since I was a child, and I have invented several instruments. Although I do not adhere to any scheme of correspondences between color and music, the musical experience has correlations with the experience of color-changing art. I continue to explore relationships between music and kinetic visual art."
The opening will also include performances by Dan and several friends from the Baltimore experimental music scene:
Daniel Conrad - flute with effects
Eric Franklin and Sam Burt - daxophone duet
Daniel Conrad and Eric Franklin - wildwave and theremin
Steve Strohmeier - organ