Jasper Community Arts is pleased to present the work of Louisville, KY mixed-media artists, John Begley and Linda Erzinger for the months of May, June, and July 2024 at the Thyen-Clark Cultural Center. The two-person immersive installation exhibit will feature a variety of lights, sounds, projections, digital art as well as found art and natural objects that engage and directly involve the viewer in the artwork.
Installation art is an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. The genre incorporates a broad range of everyday and natural materials, which are often chosen for their “evocative” qualities, as well as new media such as video, sound, performance, immersive virtual reality, and the internet.
Erzinger states, “I have been fascinated with mass consumerism, waste, health, and women’s issues. My work is rooted in an exploration of cycles, circles, connection, and disconnection. Through my art, I hope to prompt conversations about consumer habits while building social consciousness and environmental awareness. Tying social and environmental issues together I aim to present a broader picture of our American society.”
As an artist, Begley states, “From my first engagement as a printmaker to currently working with digital art, my work explores the impact of technological reproducibility on the traditional notions of aura and originality in art. I am interested in how mass-consumed media has led to the shattering of tradition in art, and how this has impacted the viewer’s experience of the artwork.”
Rather than producing art that is an object, a consumable product, both artists are interested in designing a unique gallery experience that blurs the boundaries between various mediums, offering viewers a range of experiences that challenge traditional art categories. We seek to explore time and performance through video art, light and sound as well as vernacular products, found and natural objects to create a category-crossing physical work and experience that embodies and conveys the charge of creative intention, while also addressing the disenchantment of 21st-century life and media.
Installation art plays with the idea of heightening awareness of the space in which art is placed. This art asks its viewers to examine the presentness of their situation, i.e. being in an art gallery and expecting an aesthetic experience. However, an installation artist often asks the viewer to define for themselves what they expect and what they bring to the experience.
To do this they often saturate the senses and elevate ornament and decoration and use a variety of materials and techniques that are not always considered art media but instead use objects from everyday life to create a vibrant sense of the here and now.
Installations do not seek the art experience through an artistic fiction, such as a framed painting that presents an imaginary 2D realm or a sculpture on a pedestal that is not-of-this-world but an idealized allegorical place. Through the immediacy and proximity of three-dimensional constructions that may evoke quizzical, juxtaposed ideas and references to the viewer’s presence among this setting, Installation art strives to bring art into the here and now.
Begley is currently a freelance curator, artist, and arts management consultant. He holds a Masters of Fine Arts from Indiana University and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of New Mexico. Erzinger holds a Masters in Expressive Therapies from the University of Louisville and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration from Savannah College of Art and Design.
The two-person installation exhibition will be on display from May 2nd through July 21st, 2024. Both artists will attend the First Thursday Receptions to give a Gallery Talk. The First Thursday Receptions will take place on Thursday, May 2nd, June 6th, and July 11th, 2024, from 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm.
The galleries at the Thyen-Clark Cultural Center, located at 100 3rd Avenue, Suite A, Jasper, IN 47546, are open to the public Monday through Friday from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, Saturday from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm, and Sunday from noon to 3:00 pm. School groups, clubs, and students are welcome. Admission is free. Donations appreciated.
For more information, please call 812-482-3070. Jasper Community Arts is a department of the City of Jasper. JCA is supported in part by Friends of the Arts, Inc., the Indiana Arts Commission, The Arts Council of Southwestern Indiana, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
