Video art shines at SPACES

An abstraction of and engagement with the body proper is part of SPACES' exhibition, Physical Landscapes: Between Body and Mind, an in-depth exploration of the body as a template for mythic and political transcendence. On view until Oct. 22, the exhibit brings together the work of four Ohio artists whose use of video lends itself to a discussion of physicality and its consequences.

Located on the Superior Viaduct in Cleveland, SPACES provides local, regional and national artists with the opportunity to show the work of developing and experimental artists. Since the gallery opened nine years ago, the Programming Committee has been discussing an exhibition that would rely entirely on video installation. Although artists at SPACES have often combined video with other media, this is the first exhibit that has focused entirely on that medium.

Julie Fehrenbach, Associate Director of SPACES, feels that the use of video naturally leads to a reflection on the symbolic power of the body. As a result of what Fehrenbach calls the "integrated sensory experience" of video, viewers approach images of the body in a manner entirely different from other means of expression like sculpture or painting. Things like gesture and a sense of time blend together, creating a genuine experience. It is this "lifelike encounter" that, according to Fehrenbach, "facilitates the exploration of the psyche through actions of the body."

Assistant Professor Lynn Lukkas, absent from Oberlin this Fall, returned to Ohio for a week to set up Epura, whose title refers to the ritual act of submerging the body in water to achieve a kind of spiritual purification. Flooding the space between two screens with a ghostly blue light, Lukkas projects twin images of a body floating underwater. The audience seems to be at the bottom of a pool, looking up at an anonymous human form whose clothing gently snakes around its legs. Playing on the idea of formlessness and a loss of gravity, Lukkas says that Epura advises the audience to see "the experience of being human and being alive as weightlessness."

Relying more on traditional notions of the body is Xiomin Gu's "Seven Minutes Exercise" which asks viewers to take off their shoes and enter the darkened 9 x 10 room one at a time.

Images of the artist in various poses repeatedly burst from clarity into clouded balls of light while managing a beautiful and quiet solemnity. Moving from the position of the seated Buddha to that of the Crucifixion, Gu metaphorically bridges the gap between Eastern and Western concepts of the body. Using very simple images that imply his background in photography, Gu presents a sacred vision of the body, one that easily suggests the integration between the body and the mind.

Division, however, is paramount to Dennis Dukeman; he lefts his right, he rights his left. In this piece, two ears are spliced from their owners and face each other in what looks to be a fleshy butterfly. As the image vibrates, the ears whirl into Rorschach inkblot, disrobing their familiarity and the viewer's casual sense of perspective. Dukeman points to his use of video as a way of abstracting the body and involves its presence in his conception of the work.

"Minutes Exercise" asks viewers to take off their shoes and enter the darkened 9 x 10 room one at a time. Images of the artist in various poses repeatedly burst from clarity into clouded balls of light while managing a beautiful and quiet solemnity. Moving from the position of the seated Buddha to that of the Crucifixion, Gu metaphorically bridges the gap between Eastern and Western concepts of the body.

Using very simple images that imply his background in photography, Gu presents a sacred vision of the body, one that easily suggests the integration between the body and the mind.Hidden in the back of the gallery is a piece that does not depend entirely on video but perhaps uses it in the most complicated way.

In Civil Divination, by Claudia Esslinger, the audience encounters an army of rust-colored divining rods; hundreds of painted branches dangle from the ceiling, creating a path that leads to a video monitor-screen contraption.

While the monitor shows the inner mechanics of some unknown machine, a transparent canvas reveals a loose projection of swimmers in red bathing suits that seem to bubble up from the machinery. As Esslinger transforms the branches into divining rods and then into scepters and gavels, the viewer is encouraged to see the seemingly absurd swimmers as a public surrounded by a puzzling forest of authority. Stunning and well crafted, Civil Divination fills the viewer with an appreciation for Esslinger's precise sense of composition as well as her unique use of video.