KVT – Project by kYra Storm Van Leewen

KVT HAS A TASTE FOR STRIPES

A last bit of interior monologue before I pack up the blogger’s keyboard for Tet and allow the cat in me to take control so that all I want to do is to curl up in a warm place with some good books. After reading the following, most will imagine that I’ve forsaken the real thing for an ebook but until I find a virtual way to turn down the corners of the pages I’ll have to stick with paper.

Popped into Goethe on Thursday night and caught Dutch artist kYra Storm Van Leeuwen’s computer animation video.

It was really enjoyable. The video (about 8 minutes duration and on a loop) was a fascinating excursion, at times seeming to reference Bridgit Riley’s vertical stripes though in violet, acid yellow, soft tans and subtle shades between…. but once it had these stripes almost perfect they shifted to a horizontal plane. At times it was a minimal configuration and then dense, hard edge abstraction. Sometimes 2 dimensional and at others, muti-plane and muti-level. Check out the following to see some really gorgeous, though non moving, stripes: leslieparke.com/blog/tag/minimalist-painting/

It was a visual treat and my mind imagined this type of work on huge flat screens in a gallery….perhaps the way of fine art in the foreseeable future. As the cashed-up art-buying age demographic becomes dominated by those fully attuned to this technology (and it seems to become more user accessible every day) I predict that they will buy video and computer generated art in preference to static display stuff. Perhaps it will become the dominant art form. As in Van Leeuwen’s piece, sound tracks often accompany the work but these are easy to mute….even if that doesn’t fit with the artist’s intent. Of course there’ll be lots of cruddy works around but, then, that’s true about all art forms – but the best will become great works or collectable art.

With work like Van Leeuwen’s I imagine that there’d be a pause control so that you could still a moment that you particularly like…for as long as you like.

Once I had a taste for the artitst’s video I navigated through her website (www.kyra6.net) and found that I also appreciated her non computer generated work and easily took her conceptual ideas on board.

As she explains, although her computer generated work may appear to be a bit radical, in Germany, for example, it’s run of the mill stuff….as it should be in a world burgeoning with graphic and animation technology that even small kids seem to master in the blink of an eyelid….whereas I struggle with anything that has more than one control button.

kYra was an Artist in Residence with Doclab…and what a great idea to provide a space so that artists with specific expertise can share it around.

Chuc mung nam moi in a purring way and I hope that the cat inspires some good exhibitions and performances in the coming lunar year.