Left: Marian Zazeela, Abstract #1 from Quadrilateral Phase Angle Traversals, 2003, copyright © Marian Zazeela 2018.
Right: Jung Hee Choi, Environmental Composition 2017 #1, 2017, copyright © Jung Hee Choi 2017.
Marian Zazeela Jung Hee Choi
Dream House
Sound and Light Environment
Opening: Wednesday, July 25, 2018, 2 pm
Hours: Wednesday-Saturday, 2pm-midnight
MELA Foundation
275 Church Street, 3rd Floor, New York
T 917 972 3674 or 212 219 3019
www.melafoundation.org
Admission: $10.00
MELA Foundation presents a collaborative Sound and Light Environment by Marian Zazeela and Jung Hee Choi, at Dream House, 275 Church Street, 3rd Floor. The environment is open Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays from 2:00 PM to Midnight. Admission is $10.00. This long-term exhibition will open Wednesday, July 25, 2018.
In the current environment, we are presenting Marian Zazeela's Abstract #1 from Quadrilateral Phase Angle Traversals. Zazeela wrote, “Much of my work in light and calligraphy has been grounded in concepts of structural symmetry. Quadrilateral Phase Angle Traversals is based on the Word Portraits series of drawings and neon sculptures in which I have presented names, words or ideas drawn with their bilaterally symmetrical, retrograde and mirror-inverted images, so that the abstract form of the written word may be viewed independently from its meaning. This allows the visual content of the work to be considered both apart from, and along with, the significance of the word. In Abstract #1 from Quadrilateral Phase Angle Traversals, I turned this concept inside-out and created a pattern that is derived from and evocative of letter forms, but which does not generate known words. The projection becomes a mandala-like visual focus interweaving through time.” Zazeela’s wall sculpture, Ruine Window 1992 from her series, Still Light will also be presented.
The continuation of Choi's sound installation “The Tone-field: perceptible arithmetical relations in a cycle of eight Indian raga scale permutations, 18 VII 25 – 18 IX 29, New York” converts the Dream House space into an audibly perceptible number-field that orbits through eight modal scales based on the ancient raga systems of India. The 24-hour cycle of The Tone-field will be recalculated daily to create a modal scale that is appropriate for the time of day corresponding to the movement of the Sun in New York. Choi writes, “In The Tone-field the space and the musical structure are concomitant where the space becomes the musical scale. The listener’s body is completely enveloped by sound and shares its dimensions with the numerical structure of the present intervallic ratios.”
Choi has presented series of environmental compositions with video, evolving light-point patterns, drawings, incense, performance and sound involving the concept of “Manifest Unmanifest.” Her synthesis of expression in these series collectively creates an intersubjective space as a unified continuum and emphasizes the totality of sense perceptions as a single unit to create a state of immersion. The New York Times wrote about Choi’s multimedia installation Ahata Anahata, Manifest Unmanifest IX, ”If you give in to it while watching Ms. Choi’s hallucinatory screen, you may find yourself in an altered state of consciousness, on the verge of some ineffable, transcendental revelation.” (August 28, 2015)
The Village Voice listed the MELA Church Street Dream House as the Best Art Installation in New York 2014, “A charge for the mind as much as for the eye and ear, the Dream House feels like a gift to our beleaguered city, where headspace is the most precious real estate of all.”
In the current environment, we are presenting Marian Zazeela's Abstract #1 from Quadrilateral Phase Angle Traversals. Zazeela wrote, “Much of my work in light and calligraphy has been grounded in concepts of structural symmetry. Quadrilateral Phase Angle Traversals is based on the Word Portraits series of drawings and neon sculptures in which I have presented names, words or ideas drawn with their bilaterally symmetrical, retrograde and mirror-inverted images, so that the abstract form of the written word may be viewed independently from its meaning. This allows the visual content of the work to be considered both apart from, and along with, the significance of the word. In Abstract #1 from Quadrilateral Phase Angle Traversals, I turned this concept inside-out and created a pattern that is derived from and evocative of letter forms, but which does not generate known words. The projection becomes a mandala-like visual focus interweaving through time.” Zazeela’s wall sculpture, Ruine Window 1992 from her series, Still Light will also be presented.
The continuation of Choi's sound installation “The Tone-field: perceptible arithmetical relations in a cycle of eight Indian raga scale permutations, 18 VII 25 – 18 IX 29, New York” converts the Dream House space into an audibly perceptible number-field that orbits through eight modal scales based on the ancient raga systems of India. The 24-hour cycle of The Tone-field will be recalculated daily to create a modal scale that is appropriate for the time of day corresponding to the movement of the Sun in New York. Choi writes, “In The Tone-field the space and the musical structure are concomitant where the space becomes the musical scale. The listener’s body is completely enveloped by sound and shares its dimensions with the numerical structure of the present intervallic ratios.”
Choi has presented series of environmental compositions with video, evolving light-point patterns, drawings, incense, performance and sound involving the concept of “Manifest Unmanifest.” Her synthesis of expression in these series collectively creates an intersubjective space as a unified continuum and emphasizes the totality of sense perceptions as a single unit to create a state of immersion. The New York Times wrote about Choi’s multimedia installation Ahata Anahata, Manifest Unmanifest IX, ”If you give in to it while watching Ms. Choi’s hallucinatory screen, you may find yourself in an altered state of consciousness, on the verge of some ineffable, transcendental revelation.” (August 28, 2015)
The Village Voice listed the MELA Church Street Dream House as the Best Art Installation in New York 2014, “A charge for the mind as much as for the eye and ear, the Dream House feels like a gift to our beleaguered city, where headspace is the most precious real estate of all.”