Two Curtains of 30,000 Prescription Lenses Cast a Distorted Water-Like Glimmer Across a Beijing Gallery



All pictures courtesy of PIKOU, shared with permission

Suspended from an undulating steel rod, two translucent patchwork curtains of prescription eyeglasses evoke the gleaming shimmer of a waterfall. The disorienting set up is the second in a sequence of optical works by Canadian artists Caitlind r.c. Brown and Wayne Garrett (beforehand), who created a smaller kinetic piece centered across the idea of collective imaginative and prescient again in 2015.

Bigger in scale and higher in materials than the primary, “And Between Us, An Ocean” makes use of 30,000 recycled polycarbonate plastic lenses sourced from a Beijing manufacturing unit and Calgary recycling center. The twin set up bisects a gallery at Times Art Museum and distorts the house as guests transfer amongst the glimmering curtains. A pixelated, contorted view emerges by the varied prescriptions in every lens, skewing views and proposing questions in regards to the relationship between single and shared imaginative and prescient. Brown and Garrett write in a statement:

What faint ghosts are carried by such intimate objects—home windows on the world for the viewers of 1? How is our shared actuality formed by so many views of the identical place and time? Faraway from their unique objective, the eyeglass lenses implicate one thing particular in regards to the mass and scale of our human expertise, and the ability of our want to see the world (and one another) extra clearly.

“And Between Us, An Ocean” is on view on the Beijing museum by September 12 earlier than it travels to its subsequent location. See the process behind the development, which occurred between Canada and China, and discover extra of the pair’s ocular works on their site.

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