SITUATIONS X FORELAND

Presents

NATALJA KENT: LIGHT MOVES

Opening Friday, July 1, 5-7 PM
Exhibition Dates: July 1 - 24, 2022
Upstate Art Weekend: July 22 - 24, 2022

FORELAND
111 Water Street
Catskill, NY

NATALJA KENT is a Los Angeles based artist whose practice investigates movement, light, and color through chromogenic material and technology. For her exhibition, titled Light Moves, Kent presents three bodies of inter-related artworks: light paintings from her ‘Movement Artifact’ series, a kaleidoscopic sculpture using outdoor light and the viewer’s own refracted image, and an interactive component developed with a team of VR engineers. Viewers are invited to wear a virtual reality headset to mimic the motions Kent uses in the darkroom in order to create their own compositions. 

Research and studio-process experimentation form the foundation of Kent’s practice. Kent’s series, titled ‘Movement Artifact’, is made using lights, movement, colored gels, meditation, and chromogenic paper in the pitch-black color-darkroom, without a camera or lens. After the darkroom process, the paper is then fed through a processor and an unexpected “colorfield” develops. Chromogenic paper has a unique color register, different from that of digital printing, which adds to the intensity of spectral play. 

During a residency at The Santa Monica Camera Obscura, Kent was positioned on the beach with large windows. She began exploring the way the natural beach light appeared when filtered through layers of transparent colored gels, a tool used in her color-darkroom process. She built kaleidoscopic sculptures using mirrors as a way to further manipulate the light. The interaction encourages a similar play and movement used in her own photographic image-creation. However, in contrast to her chromogenic light paintings, the images maintain an ephemeral and unfixed quality.  

Most recently, Kent was awarded a grant to develop a project using virtual reality. She worked with experts to develop custom software for three environments, titled Light Moves. The viewer wears a VR headset, and when they click their handsets, beams of colored light in various shapes appear. The viewer is able to build their own unique composition in 3-D virtual space that mimics the results of Kent’s process in the darkroom. 

NATALJA KENT holds a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Her collaborative/feminist/social practice work has included participation in groups such as Mapping, Feminist LA/Women’s Center for Creative Work, Assume Vivid Astro Focus, The Dirt Palace and The Good Good. Awards include the Camera Obscura, Santa Monica Artists Residency, The Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Fellowship in Photography, Women’s Center for Creative Work Grant and Ladies’ Room Artist Residency. She has shown work and/or performed at Tate Liverpool; Carpenter Center for The Visual Arts, Harvard; Hiromi Yoshi Gallery, Tokyo, Japan; and PS1, MOMA Queens.