--> Thursday, January 30th, 2014 @ 7pm doors, 7:30 pm event
Transfiguration on Forked River Mountain and Empire
with Brent Everett Dickinson & Jean-Marc Superville Sovak
Transfiguration on Forked River Mountain (2013-2014) is a not-yet-completed short film shot on location in the New Jersey Pine Barrens and various locations in NYC. In this main scene that was shot on the peak of Forked River Mountain in the Pine Barrens, whose narrative is interrupted by minor catastrophes that loosely map to Christ’s baptism, his encounter with the Spirit in the form of a bird, and his experience on the Mount of Transfiguration, the “Preacher” experiences an epiphany at an unlikely moment that is outwardly made manifest by his changed countenance. The theme of the film is an exploration of the felt similarities between creative inspiration and spiritual awakening and the ways that those can be understood as both a gift and a curse. In this scene the “Preacher” has a mountaintop experience on the peak of a mountain whose height extends only 180 feet above sea level. Revelations that occur at such a proximate distance from the gravitational resting place of water are often rendered fluid. Excerpted scene running time 10 min.
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Brent Everett Dickinson has exhibited his multi-media work throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. He earned a MFA in painting from Yale University after graduating with a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Dickinson also studied Christian theology at Philadelphia Biblical University and at the L’Abri Fellowship in Huemoz, Switzerland. In recent years he has greatly expanded his studio practice from a strictly painting studio to a truly decentralized practice that includes multimedia sculptural installations, sound composition, experimental processes and film. He has produced original sound pieces for the Chelsea Music Festival and the Cornerstone Music Festival. Recently he was commissioned to produce a sound and sculpture piece for the Socrates sculpture park and a large-scale sculpture and sound installation for the Essl Museum in Vienna, Austria, as part of the exhibition, New. New York. Currently Dickinson is developing experimental drawings with the use of fruit flies and mosquitos, creating mineralized fossils in various meaningful landscapes around the country and producing a video that utilizes a low-tech interface with Google maps to travel one of Hitler’s toilets that currently resides in an auto-service station bathroom in New Jersey around the world, arriving back to its rightful place in Central New Jersey.
EMPIRE
The irony of building with a broken brick that says “Empire” seems perfect: I think we stand on the debris of giants as much as on their shoulders.
When I began collecting cracked and molten fragments of “Empire” bricks, the waste of one of the 140 brick plants that once lined the Hudson River, it was with the idea of trying to build with an incompetent yet symbolically charged material. It was a way of starting at the end point, in anticipation of the inevitable.
I am interested in these bricks as a form of interpretive history, by using a single element to investigate the relationship between seemingly disparate structures, such as factories, churches, mosques, or New York City housing projects.
Using a brick not only as an object, but as an idea, has led me to giving NYC tours of buildings built from this material, to sharing with Spanish prison inmates the 5000-year-old process of making bricks, to making architectural “follies” as public art.
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Jean-Marc is an artist who makes videos of his doppelgangers, collects antique bricks, draws portraits of lynch mobs, and gives guided tours of NYC housing projects. His work has been exhibited at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Socrates Sculpture Park, Manifesta 8 European Biennial of Contemporary Art, Murcia, Spain and the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York City. His videos are distributed by Videographe, Inc., and have been screened worldwide. Jean-Marc is the recipient of an Emerging Artist Fellowship at Socrates Sculpture Park, a NYFA SOS Grant, and a Canada Council Travel Grant. He was selected as a Smack Mellon Hot Pick and has been a guest speaker at Shadow Festival 8 in Amsterdam, the New York Public Library, and Bard College. He is the illustrator of the award-winning novel Deadly by Julie Chibbaro. He lives and works with Julie in Beacon, NY.
Photos from event:
