Description
The exhibition Penumbra, a series of three video installations by Demetrius Oliver, connects viewers to their place in the universe by playing with earthly and human forms against a backdrop of the cosmos. In Penumbra, explorations of light and scale, movement and the rhythm of the natural world suggest journeys both physical and metaphysical. By training our eyes to look simultaneously at ourselves and the heavens, the artist establishes a continuum of existence that emphasizes unity and ultimately peace. Finding the spectacular in the everyday, Oliver transforms seemingly ordinary material building blocks into images and installations that stretch the confines of human structures and bodies into the greater universe.
This catalogue includes three essays by Light Work Associate Director Mary Goodwin.
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Demetrius Oliver (b. 1975, Brooklyn, NY) lives and works in New York, NY. He received his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI and his M.F.A from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA , and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, ME. From 2004-06 he was an artist resident at the Core Program, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX and from 2006-07 an artist-in-residence at The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY. Oliver was a Light Work Artist-in-Residence in 2009. His work has been exhibited widely, with recent solo exhibitions at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA; Rhodes College, Memphis, TN; D’Amelio Terras, NY; the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, GA and The Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston. Most recently (2010) his work Jupiter was installed on the Highline Gallery in New York City.
