Maine sojourn comes to Montclair

The Montclair Art Museum (MAM) will display videos by Brooklyn-based artist Lee Arnold on the outdoor video monitors from April 3 to September 15, 2013. Arnold explores the nature of time and perception using a variety of media, including film, animation, video, photography, drawing, and sound. Both of the videos on view at MAM, The Wanderer and The Swim (both 2012), were created during a summer sojourn in Maine. Arnold, who lives and works in Brooklyn, is also an assistant professor of art at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey.

Having studied painting and photography, Arnold is interested in the way digital media allows the synthesis of old and new forms. He accomplishes this by blending traditions of landscape painting with experiments in new technologies. Inspired by the German Romantic painters’ fascination with the sublime, The Wanderer follows the path of a monarch butterfly as it travels through a meadow. To shoot the work, the artist submerged a camera in a glass of water; the resulting image is constantly refracting, creating a painterly effect.

Without being overtly narrative or linear, Arnold’s works deconstruct the traditional elements of the moving image through shifts in perspective and varying playback speeds. The Swim is shot from the point of view of a swimmer; to create it, the artist used a small waterproof camera, strapped to his head, shooting footage as he swam. The continuous cycle of the video is slowly broken down into a series of discrete, slow-moving images, encouraging the viewer to think about the nature of time.

The Montclair Art Museum installed the outdoor video monitors in Fall 2011 to coincide with the launch of its contemporary art program. The monitors enhance the Museum’s outdoor presence as well as allow the Museum to display works beyond the gallery hours; the monitors are available for public viewing from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. seven days a week. Artists Marina Zurkow, Saya Woolfalk, and Liselot van der Heijden have previously featured works on the monitors.

Image: Lee Arnold (American/British, born United Kingdom, 1972), Still from The Swim, 2012. Digital video, 3 min. 32 sec. loop. Courtesy of the artist