Opening Reception: Maybe A Horse

ARC: Artist Residency Chattanooga, in partnership with LIT Gallery, is excited to present Maybe A Horse, the second collaboration between Israeli husband-and-wife duo Rotem & Omri Zin-Tamir. Stemming from notions about “Art as a device for seeing” that originate in a 1919 text by Russian literary critique Viktor Shklovsky titled “Art as Device”, Zin-Tamir are creating an installation that probes the condition of interaction with space and imagery and challenges the automated state of everyday perception.

The exhibition will contain several images dispersed across the gallery walls, and will circle around a central object in the form of a large wooden box that draws influence from large format street cameras. The box in fact operates as an image machine, displaying a sequence of gradual changes in a series of moving images. This display is housed inside what’s known as a Pepperʼs Ghost theater – an illusionistic theater aimed at creating physical presence where none actually exists – and will be viewed through an opening in the front of the box, accessible to a single viewer at a time and inviting them to engage in the physical act of seeing.

Within the box, objects of various degrees of ordinariness and familiarity, will move seemingly spontaneously and interact with each other. They will appear and disappear, move independently across the space, defy gravity, interact with and transform into other objects, and so on. The objects will assume a holographic ambiguity that registers as physical presence but alters conventional perceptions of scale, movement and depth, suggesting a kind of wonderland where nothing is quite what it seems to be. The images on the walls in the exhibition depict the objects in various stages extracted from the process of creating the image sequence displayed in the box. They are placed in a still mode, frozen in time, calling for a more intimate examination and yet maintaining a sensual appeal and disclosing little to nothing more about their quantifiable nature.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Rotem & Omri Zin-Tamir are an Israeli artist duo, currently residing in Lexington VA. They both received their MFA in Sculpture + Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA; and their BFA from Bezalel Academy for Arts and Design, Jerusalem. Their collaborative work has been exhibited at Locust Projects, Miami, FL and Artists Workshops Gallery, Tel Aviv, and they were recipients of an Exhibition Grant from the Artis Organization.

ABOUT ARTIST RESIDENCY CHATTANOOGA

ARC is an arts organization which connects artists abroad with Chattanooga to develop their professional practice while educating and diversifying the arts culture, providing dedicated time and space in the Scenic City for artist to work, research & develop ideas. While in residence, artists act as cultural ambassadors, leaders, and mentors to the community of Chattanooga via educational outreach and programming that is free and open to the public. ARC’s featured residency provides lodging, studio, gallery exhibition and other opportunities at no cost to the artists.

Local artist Aaron Cowan owns and operates the residency program as its Director and partners with other local businesses and organizations to maximize the impact of nationally recognized artists visiting Chattanooga, including the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, the Chattanooga Film Festival, Association for Visual Arts, En Root House, The Palace Picture House, Cine-Rama, Mercy Junction Justice and Peace Center, LIT Gallery, Swine Gallery & Project Space, Stove Works, In Orbit Productions, and has received support in the form of visual arts grants from Arts Build, Footprint Foundation, and the UNFoundation.

For more information and available opportunities for artists, visit ARC’s website at www.arcresidency.org.