The Best Space should be deep

Installation piece in AMAM tries to challenge viewer perceptions

It's almost the 21st century, and the technological age is well underway. Modern art and its creators strive to do just that: to be "modern" and reflect the concerns and trends of the society from which they are produced.

Diana Thater's The Best Space is the Deep Space, now on exhibit at the Allen Memorial Art Museum, is characteristic of trends adopted by late 20th-century artwork. Digital and video, the popular mediums of the moment, are displayed alongside works by Picasso and artists from centuries past.

Thater argues in her artist's statement about the work that moving pictures are the dominant medium of our time. In her attempts to convey the feeling of being inside a work of art, Thater concurrently has installations up under the title The Best Space is the Deep Space at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Schindler House in Los Angeles. Perhaps even more than the exhibit itself, the multiple versions of the video installation shown concurrently across the country express Thater's belief that visual media is the predominant way we currently view, know and see the world.

The exhibit is duofold-two galleries in the AMAM house parts of the installation. The first room contains a pair of different-sized screens on which are projected images of a Lippizaner stallion and his trainer going through intensely difficult dressage movements, where the horse is required to get down on front legs in a bowing position. The room poses a question aside from the image: where does the viewer stand in physical relation to what is seen, and in what context does the viewer belong in the piece?

The images of the horse and trainer are convoluted by mists, so that the human is rarely seen, and when shown remains a silhouette. The film is lit in eerie red, blue and green giving a false sense of depth to the room.

The second part of the installation, in the Ellen Johnson gallery, holds four backdrop monitors that flash fragmented images of a zebra's hide. The central monitor in front runs a film of a zebra, which is notoriously difficult to tame, being taught to bow by an exotic animal trainer. The room's windows are shielded in red and blue translucent shades that recall the colors of the film in the first room.

The subject of both films questions man's role over nature, and concurrently the viewer contemplates the position of technology in that man-nature polarity. The space and time of the piece will change while the content remains constant, creating a narrative out of its original context. Thater's piece is centered around the timeliness of technology and its role in everyday life.