Chris Doyle: The Underglow
In Stockholm, Sweden, premiering on February 11, 2011, artwithoutwalls is presenting The Underglow, a new video animation by New York-based artist Chris Doyle. The projection, which will be visible in the public park adjacent to the US Residence, Stockholm for six weeks, was commissioned by Ambassador Matthew and Mrs. Brooke Barzun as the inaugural project of their program “A Different Kind of Light.” Building on the success of Transparency and Trans-formations in Contemporary American Art, the exhibition artwithoutwalls organized in collaboration with US ART in Embassies, the Barzuns were inspired to further their engagement with ground-breaking cultural diplomacy, while also celebrating the beauty of Scandinavian winter. “We have learned,” says Brooke Barzun, “not to think of winter as dark, but rather as providing a different kind of light.”
Until the snow canvas melts, a new radiance will pulse from below: round, brightly colored spheres rise, revealing themselves as mushrooms, whose caps broaden and morph into screens where figures and forms enact a magical alchemy of nature and technology. Images of animals, in pairs and in groups, appear and disappear in rapid succession, the action resisting a narrative arc even as the images suggest a fairy-tale world emanating virtual luminescence. The Underglow is an immersive, multi-dimensional work that creates a glowing permanence from ephemeral sources: a sculpture crafted from light, imagery, and imagination, reflecting both past and future worlds in a grounded present.
“On my first visit to Stockholm,” Chris Doyle recalls, “I learned — over a dinner that included Chanterelles — that Sweden is a country of fervid mushroom lovers, and that hunting for mushrooms is an often solitary pursuit. Having long been intrigued with the idea that as a fungus, the mushroom does not photosynthesize, I did some research on the subject. I love that they are born of decay. When I stumbled upon the bioluminescent mushroom varieties, the project began to take shape: I imagined a field of bioluminescent mushrooms, glowing like a field of LEDs, glowing and pulsing. I wanted the field to become a kind of primitive screen for a series of really simple animated drawings, vaguely reminiscent of drawings in Paleolithic caves, of herds of animals running across the field.”
The Underglow reveals a three-fold journey of discovery: the pursuit of a time-honored ritual, the reward for which is not only the thing itself — the mushroom — but what we learn about ourselves and about our connection to the earth during times of solitude; the revelation of light in all living things, which persists in every condition and stage of development; and the definitively human drive to create, to make our mark, to assert our existence, which is itself perhaps the ultimate expression of a different kind of light: the light within.
About Chris Doyle
Chris Doyle is a multidisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, New York. In addition to recent solo exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, and at The Taubman Museum of Art, his work has been shown at The Brooklyn Museum of Art, MassMoCA, P.S.1 Museum of Contemporary Art, The Tang Museum, The Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Sculpture Center, and as part of the New York Video Festival at Lincoln Center and the Melbourne International Arts Festival.
50,000 Beds, a large-scale, collaborative video installation involving 45 artists was presented simultaneously by The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, ArtSpace, New Haven, and Real Art Ways, Hartford. His work has been supported by grants from New York Foundation for the Arts, NYSCA, the Creative Capital Foundation, and the MAP Fund.
His temporary and permanent urban projects include LEAP, presented by Creative Time, Commutable, commissioned by The Public Art Fund, as well as recent commissions for Culver City, California, Tampa, Florida, Kansas City, Missouri, and Austin, Texas. He received his Bachelors degree in Fine Arts from Boston College and his Masters in Architecture from Harvard University.