“Everything Trembles”, an exhibition by CAVS Fellow Jane Philbrick
September 6 through November 8, 2009
At the Skissernas Museum, the Museum of Sketches
Archives of Public Art, Lund University, Lund Sweden
Jane Philbrick lectures on her exhibition:
Monday, November 30, 6:30 PM
Joan Jonas Performance Hall, N51-337
Contact: Meg Rotzel, CAVS, 617.253.4415, mrotzel@mit.edu
The Skissernas Museum presents “Everything Trembles,” an exhibition by Jane Philbrick, a fellow at the MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS). The exhibition takes as its departure the sketch, process, and change. Philbrick was invited by the Skissernas Museum to develop new work. This gave her the opportunity to work within the context of a place that values the “in-process” and the “unfinished.” The Skissernas Museum is literally a museum of sketches and houses an extensive collection of early drafts that reveal the beginnings of significant public artworks. Working between the Skissernas and MIT, Philbrick produced a “Rammed Earth Sculpture Garden”, now installed on the museum grounds; a fluorescent installation; a group of electronic drawings; and a handmade “Exhibition Manual” exhibition catalogue composed of texts written by collaborators, soon to be available as a download from the websites of both the Skissernas and CAVS.
The sketches and models of Marta Pan’s 1961 “Floating Sculpture/Sculpture flottante,” archived at the Skissernas Museum, became one of the centerpieces of Jane’s work while she was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies. In the exhibition she reinterprets Pan’s floating sculpture and generates new versions with the help of mathematical calculations, magnetic levitation, sound and light. The two artists, Pan and Philbrick, confront one another from different periods in time to engage in questions concerning the creative process and the significance of the copy.
The sculpture’s core form and central characteristics, its curvature and surfaces, are changed to sound waves that flow through the gallery. “There is a parallel world to the one we experience through vision, that is the world of sound,” says Philbrick. The sound waves reach out to visitors -- literally touching them. Philbrick’s work makes for a physical experience of art.
A catalogue consisting of articles written by researchers, scientists, and academics encountered by Philbrick at MIT provide an account of her work while at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies. New versions and interpretations of Pan´s sculpture “Floating Sculpture/Sculpture flottante” now floats into the 21st century. Nothing has changed, yet everything is different.
“Everything Trembles” also presents works from the Museum’s archives. Philbrick has highlighted these to focus on the central theme of the exhibition: that the universe is forever changing, forever in a perpetually energized state, ever in formation, ever in motion. Nothing is fixed. Everything trembles.
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An Artist Fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies, MIT, Jane Philbrick has focused her three-year residency on the research and production of “Everything Trembles.” Her past projects include collaborations with researchers and engineers at the Center for Spoken Language Understanding, Oregon Graduate Institute, and at Honeywell Fire Solutions Group, Clintonville, Connecticut. In 2008-09, Philbrick was the inaugural International Fellow at Location One in New York. In Sweden, she presented two large-scale mixed-media installations at the Wanås Foundation in 2006. Philbrick is currently a Visiting Professor at the Valand School of Fine Art in Gothenburg, Sweden.
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