Menu
The New Contemporary Art Magazine

Etienne Rey Sculpts Light and Space

Based in Marseille, French artist Etienne Rey creates sculptures and installations using light and mirrors. His site-specific installations respond to their physical spaces, creating unique situations. Rey's sculptures alter the conditions of their environments, changing, reflecting and refracting the light and sense of space. Motivated by a curiosity about the consciousness and science of direct experience, Rey uses his artworks to question and reveal the intricacies of human interaction and organization. As moving objects, Rey's sculptures are also bodies in space and one must negotiate how to move among these objects in the same way one approaches or avoids other persons.

Based in Marseille, French artist Etienne Rey creates sculptures and installations using light and plastics. His site-specific installations respond to their physical spaces, creating unique situations. Rey’s sculptures alter the conditions of their environments, changing, reflecting and refracting the light and sense of space. Motivated by a curiosity toward consciousness and science of direct experience, Rey uses his artworks to question and reveal the intricacies of human interaction and organization. As moving objects, Rey’s sculptures are also bodies in space and one must negotiate how to move among these objects in the same way one approaches or avoids other persons.

In “Vortex Monochromatique, Diffraction,” Rey turns a whirlpool on its side, giving viewers the singular opportunity to experience the bottom of a whirlpool while also admiring its complex geometry from the sides. “Vortex” isn’t Rey’s only installation that attempts to make the immaterial solid. Works like “Tropique” and “Spirale Polychromatique, Diffraction,” turn light into matter. Both immersive installations, “Tropique” places the viewer in the center of a light field, while “Spirale” makes the magic of stained glass windows palpable by stretching a supposed picture into individual planes. By using principles of geometry and architecture to sculpt light and space, Rey provokes ordinary perception.

Meta
Share
Facebook
Reddit
Pinterest
Email
Related Articles
For the upcoming group show "PROTEST" at M16 Art Space in Canberra, Australia, Fintan Magee created a video work based on an ephemeral installation he created in a Sydney warehouse. For the piece, Magee wanted to speak out against conservative bias in Australia's news media, which he says spreads racism, homophobia, and Islamophobia. He created a wire sculpture and stuffed with with Daily Telegraph newspapers, a publication owned by ultra-rightwing media mogul Rupert Murdoch (who also owns Fox News here in the US). Magee set the sculpture in front of a mural and set it aflame. In a video included below, he explains that the man and dog in the mural represent the master-lapdog relationship between the media and its unquestioning followers. Titled "Man Bites Dog," the multimedia piece will debut at M16 Art Space on March 26.
Leeroy New's otherworldly wearable art comes from found objects and discarded plastics, with the multidisciplinary artist’s vision making vibrancy out of the overlooked. New's practice encompasses both wearable and installation art, as his major public works have turned heads in his native Philippines and beyond.
At Burlington City Arts, Crystal Wagner's first-ever work existing in both the interior and exterior of a space comes with "Traverse." Wagner is known for biomorphic creations that span sculpture, prints, and installations. This exhibition, running through Oct. 2, features a site-specific installation that "grows from floor to ceiling and emerges outside to meander across the exterior façade." Wagner was last featured on HiFructose.com here.
When Yeats wrote that "love comes in at the eye,” he could have been thinking of the work of Vienna-based Atelier Olschinsky. It doesn't matter who the client is. It doesn't matter what the medium is. You walk away from this creative studio's work with a clear understanding of why we call the visual arts visual. You also realize how art has its own language. A language made up of nothing more than the arrangement of color, line, shape, space, and texture. We marvel at how Shakespeare worked with nothing more than 26 letters. In a similar vein, Atelier Olschinsky creates startling compositions with nothing more than muted color, dynamic, abutted shapes, and clashing lines. With great dexterity they blur the gap between art and design.

Subscribe to the Hi-Fructose Mailing List