OPUS Project Space is pleased to announce Anthony Caradonna’s first photographic exhibition, ERGO LUX, from December 5 – October 30, 2013. Gallery hours are by appointment during the month of December. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, December 5, 7-9pm.

 

Human culture has strived to define its evolving sense of place in the universe, engaging artistic practices to translate worldviews into the diverse expressive and symbolic manifestations of their living histories. Cosmologies attempt to penetrate and comprehend the origin, evolution, structure, dynamics, and fate of the universe.  Currently the cosmological debate is dominated by the Big Bang Theory.  The latest scientific contributions to the wealth of body of beliefs based on the historical, mythological, religious, and esoteric literature and traditions of creation and eschatology inspire my artistic explorations.

                 

Architecture incorporates these traditions through spatial and material strategies that attempt to align, penetrate, integrate and bring into balance universal forces.  Examples of universal modeling include mandalas, templum, Feng Shui, Tin Fang, acupuncture, Kundalini yoga, mathematics, science, genetic engineering, physics, unified theory and new theories of a multiverse.  I am fascinated by this rich tradition of cosmologies seen through the lens of art, architecture and design at multiple scales.

 

Matter and energy exchanges constitute collaborative modalities for producing universe and life as we understand them – the primary forces of creativity.  Transfer, exchange and mixing inform the interdisciplinary strategy structuring my past and developing creative projects.  Material and energy intersections define the deeper structure of my creative inquiry.  The sinusoidal and cyclical revolutions of life manifested in light and its potential energy and embedded in material memory, produce anima.  I seek to harvest and model these animabus, which are at times neglected, undetected or evasive.  Like the spectra of energy unperceivable to the human sense organs, light and sound are aspects of the universe made conscious, reflecting themselves in human cognition. 

 

Light and material become precious in human terms when their qualities and quantities diminish in their perceived presence and availability.  Our expanding universe will one day darken with the expanding distance between stars.  In our current perceived planetary material depletion, polymers and plastics occupy a large portion of our material culture in the form of pre and post consumer products.  They are reclaimed, reconstituted fossilized remains of previous lives.  Our cities, our living universal models, are the play ground of a physical and metaphysical discourse between reconstituted forces.

 

ERGO LUX, the current series of digital photographs and digitally mastered prints explore multimedia, interdisciplinary practices. Still life and landscape traditions inform one level of reading. Plastic water bottles receive sunlight in kaleidoscopic splendor.  Divining ways to translate this light scripting employs photography and digital editing to order light within the traditional frame of the photo print and digital screen.  The resulting light imprints in this series, attempt to align, extend and make legible the underlying order, present and produced by, the filtering process of light, water and plastic.  These precious commodities are caught in balance between the waxing and waning of life cycles. They model fleeting moments harvested by digital photography mapped by digital printing.  This unique collaborative partnership integrates the energy and talents of visual artist and architect, Yubi Park, classical scholar, Emily Fairey and excerpts from poet Melissa Buzzeo, exemplifying the interdisciplinary exchange that deeply informs my practice and inquiry. The parallel and paired images, titles and texts model the potential synaptic exchange of ideas across languages and disciplines, between matter and energy.