Shore and Fisher at Angstrom Gallery

February 22nd, 2005 · 2 Comments · Artists

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Jeff Shore and Jon Fisher

We’re the kind of people who travel to see art, and who see art wherever we travel. As a result, we’ve had the good fortune to chance upon good artists that we otherwise might not have known about. Over the holidays, we were in Dallas and stopped in on Angstrom Gallery, whose name I’d seen around in the various art rags. I was expecting the gallery to be fairly good, but what took me by surprise was that we walked into Angstrom Horseplay Glow Rug, a show that easily rivaled anything up in LA at the time.

There was one standout artist duo in this excellent bunch that neither of us could stop thinking about. In fact, we were so hooked, we had to see the show a second time before we headed back to California.

Jeff Shore and Jon Fisher, Houston and Austin-based, create complex yet raw installations of oft-interactive sound with construction and video. Our world is reduced to tiny dimensions and then projected back as a surreal (if not critical) reflections of human existence. Lynch meets Douglas Gordon meets, well, 1970’s Sesame Street.[via Angstrom’s press release]

Shore and Fisher had two pieces in the show: Talking Head, 2004 and Live Feed, 2004. Both are interactive contraptions involving live-manipulated video and sound. The pair have a Tim Hawkinson/sloppy/Home Depot aesthetic, and, like Hawkinson, they walk the line between whimsy and profundity.

Talking Head requires the viewer to give an audio sample, and a vast, clunky circuitry whirrs into motion, transmuting your voice into a wild splinter that sings back to you from the mouth of a mechanical face.

But it was Live Feed, a vastly complicated live-feed video installation that had us transfixed for days after seeing it. Four lightboxes are installed on the gallery wall, joined with a series of wires to four skin drums and a projector. In each lightbox is a diorama, a scene that moves as an in-box camera pans over it. The video triggers the drums, creating an eery soundscape, and the live scenes are patched together and projected onto the opposite wall. The video is always different, and interspersed with video from all the boxes. What results is a disjointed narrative that explores the connections and disconnections between home, work, modern travel, and nature.

Angstrom consistently shows good artists who often end up in big places. You might not be able to make it to Dallas, but if you’re in New York, Angstrom will be representing at the Armory Show, March 11-14th, Booth 90-135.

Jeff Shore and Jon Fisher
Angstrom Gallery
The Armory Show

Category: Artists

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