Red Heart/Black Tongues

David Mitchell

2008 Summer Resident Artist

September 13 - November 8, 2008

Opening Reception: Saturday, September 13, 2008 from 8 - 11 p.m.

Emerging artist David Mitchell recently received his MFA from NYU.  He is a fairly unique artists in that he seems to possess innate artistic skill which he can apply equally to drawing, sculpture, video, photography and installation work.  Increasingly David has been combining these disparate media into large-scale installations.  For this summer residency project Mitchell will present his most ambitious project to date.  Mitchell writes about his inspiration for this work, “In our cars at night, the dotted lines pass through our peripherals like some cryptic code, headlights dance across a blanket of black, and the horizon is emptied of all discern. We drive and we dream. We move at superhuman speeds. We pass through the night in dream machines. The machines are a part of us, a physiological appurtenance, and in them we become recluses.”

Red Heart/Black Tongues will be a full-scale installation consisting of two cars, two taxidermy deer, three channels of projected video, multiple channels of audio, and MIDI controlled lighting, all operating on a 10 minute synced loop.  

 

Geographic Tongues, 2007, Taxidermy Deer Forms, Acrylic Paint, Fluorescent tubes, 14 x 14 feet.
Untitled, 2008, Taxidermed Fox, Wood, Resin, Plastic, Sparkle Laminate, 46 x 30 x 30 inches.
Kissy Face, 2006 Porcelain, plaster, taxidermed coyote. 46 x 30 x30 inches

 

About Big Orbit's Site-Specific Summer Residency Program

Funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts, the purpose of the residencies, as is stated in the call for submissions, is to provide artists working in the realm of site-specific, installation based art a unique opportunity to work unhindered for twelve weeks in a gallery setting creating a large scale, site-specific installation. Upon conclusion of the residency, the resulting artwork will be presented to the public in an 8 week exhibition. Each residency/exhibition project will be documented in an accompanying catalogue as well as on the gallery's website.

Big Orbit's main goal in this Residency/Exhibition project is to foster an environment of opportunity and experimentation for artists addressing the evolution of contemporary critical issues by funding on-site artistic production that promotes cultural discourse. We hope that by doing so Big Orbit will progress in its goal of becoming a locus for the diverse tendencies of visual expression and an invaluable resource to audiences engaged in the global dialogue of contemporary culture. The Endowment's goal in Artistic Creativity and Preservation for artists and arts organization to have the opportunity to create, interpret, present, and perform artistic work cannot be more fulfilled than with a project of this type. Big Orbit is providing a unique and rare service to artists in presenting them with both project funding and 24 hour access to a large gallery for 12 weeks in which they have total freedom to create a large-scale site specific installation and present it to the public. The results of which will significantly advance their careers while enriching the cultural fabric of the community. Installation based art has the ability to engage the public in a multi-disciplinary, cross-media discourse that holds the potential to involve more kinds of people in the artistic process.