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Indepth Arts News:
"Beyond the Vanishing Point: Media and Myth in America Photographs by Warren Neidich"
2000-11-11 until 2000-12-30
Bayly Art Museum
Charlottesville, VA,
USA
Warren Neidich is one of America's most excitingly relevant photographers and video artists, says curator
Stephen Margulies. His belief that there is a strong connection between neurobiology, culture, history, and
the media has a firm foundation in his own background as a former ophthalmologist and neurobiologist, as
well as in his studies of culture and media. The exhibition of photographic images is divided into two
sections and is accompanied by a new book on Neidich's art.
Section I - Camp O.J. - presents a site-specific installation of large-scale color photographs depicting the
media circus that literally surrounded the O. J. Simpson trial. Beautiful, mythic, and surreally mad, these
photographs, says Margulies, record the panorama of reporters, technicians, cameras, equipment and strange
rituals that came to be known as Camp O.J. The Camp, as Neidich shows, was a temporary city of the
media, which seemed to sum up the public's need for information as well as its ability to distort and consume
it.
Section II - The Calico Series - documents Calico, a restored silver-mining town in Barstow, California, that
functions as part historic museum, like Williamsburg, and part Walt Disney Theme Park. As with Camp
O.J., notes Margulies, history becomes inextricably entwined with media presentation and entertainment.
The Calico Series takes us further into this connection between history and what Neidich calls the
neurobiological basis of consciousness. To do this the artist connected his camera to a pair of red-green
glasses used to investigate problems of the eye. The result distorts and makes almost ghostly the visual
experience of an historical artifact. Neidich's desire to analyze both the nature of vision and the way we view
our historical myths produces photographs of intense magic as much as social criticism.
Accompanying the exhibition there will be a Gallery Talk by Warren Neidich on Sunday, November 12, at 2
pm in the Museum. There will also be a Panel Discussion the following Monday, November 13, at 5:30 pm
in Campbell 153. Issues of perception will be discussed with Warren Neidich; Johanna R. Drucker,
Robertson Professor of Media Studies; Michael Kubovy, professor of psychology; and moderator Stephen
Margulies, curator of works on paper.
The exhibition and its programming are supported in part by the University's Arts Enhancement Funds
and Arts$ program.
The Bayly Art Museum is open to the public Tuesday - Sunday, 1-5 p.m. without charge. The Museum is
located on Rugby Road, a short distance from the Rotunda.
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