2014 Exhibition
DLECTRICITY is Detroit’s nighttime festival of art + light that featured over 35 world-renowned and emerging artists whose cutting-edge works of art illuminated Midtown Detroit in 2014, from the Detroit Institute of Arts down to the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. This two-night “Nuit Blanche” festival was scheduled for Friday, September 26 and Saturday, September 27 in Midtown Detroit from 7:00 p.m. to midnight. Saturday night also featured the DLECTRICITY Light Bike Parade where thousands of cyclists biked a 4-mile route through Midtown Detroit, adding extra light and energy to the streets. Weekend programming also included artist talks and performances. DLECTRICITY is produced by Midtown Detroit, Inc. and is free to the public.
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19. Light
An extroverted mass projects its interior mechanism to create its own atmosphere, prompting a dialogue between the rational topography and its dislocated environment. The projected imagery builds in superimposed layers around the space. As light leaks and pools across the façade of the central form it leaves pinhole after-images and sweeping slivers of light that take over and complicate the bulky mass.
Through reduced means using cardboard boxes, light bulbs and lenses, a rudimentary projection device is created wherein the light source is simultaneously the image. The light bulb itself, as an updated quintessential pop object, also evokes searchlights and observation instruments. As the light source, image, and instrument become collapsed, a picture of contemporary self-surveillance emerges.
The looping cinematic space recalls early Dadaist optical experimentations of Duchamp’s Rotoreliefs and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy Light-Space Modulator combined with the language of later works such as Annette Lemieux’s Search, which more explicitly evoke drone supervision and mechanization.
Artist Information
Charlotte Becket
Charlotte Becket lives and works in New York City where she is also an Associate Professor at Pace University. She attended Hunter College’s MFA program and received her BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art. Solo and two person exhibitions include Valentine Gallery NY, Crisp Gallery in London, LEAP in Berlin, Taxter and Spengemann in New York City as well as group exhibitions at Gazelli Art House in London, Anna Kustera, Lorimoto, NY Studio Gallery, Passerby and the Invitational Exhibition Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City. She has been invited to lecture on her work at various galleries and universities and has been the recipient of grants from The Joan Mitchell Foundation, The Tony Smith Foundation, and the Verizon Foundation. Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, TimeOut London, ArtForum, and Art in America, among others. She was recently included in, 100 Artists, a compendium of interviews with 100 international contemporary artists by Francesca Gavin.
www.charlotte-becket.com