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Divine Coalescence
Katy Diamond Hamer
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 | | | | | | 27.06.2012 Berlin, Germany For one night only at the Bärensaal in Berlin, Divine Coalescence was the who's who of art and society events. New York and Berlin based curator Leo Kuelbs organized the site specific, large format video mapping piece along with the creative team Glowing Bulbs, who are based respectively in New York and Budapest. Dom Pérignon Creators Event sponsored the evening. Entering the elaborate venue, one was initially greeted with a glass of champagne. A menu of specific vintages accompanied the five course dinner menu and guests were treated with a special selection ranging from 2000, 1996, and a 2003 Rosé. Each glass had a distinct, individual taste differentiating one year from the other. Midway through the dinner, featuring many important Berlin based high-society and art world guests, Divine Coalescence was shown. The room grew quiet with anticipation and then soprano opera singer Nadja Michael appeared above, stepping out through an archway onto a balcony. As she started to sing an original song, titled Day of the Days, the light in the space completely changed. Walls that at once appeared real, were projected on the north and south facing parts of the building, and then seemed to fall apart. The music was choreographed perfectly adding to a heightened sense of drama and a moment that seemed to represent both metaphorical construction and collapse. The ceiling opened up and revealed a sky and then the classic interior of a Renaissance church. Ms. Michael swayed and altered the tonalities of her voice both whispering and then screaming as virtual glass smashed and a dove burst onto the scene flying across the irregular interior of the hall. The magic of the drama was that it was all projected. | | | | Utilizing a myriad of projectors along with computer programming, each inch of the walls and ceiling were teeming with a sense of light and life that was completely surface based. In an highly frenetic contemporary form of Tromp l'oeil and rather than use paint, video artists are now able to expand upon the interior and exterior concept of space making a false sense of depth and dimension. The effect is similar to what was evident in grisaille painting but instead of making an installation that will stand the test of time, the artists use light, which is in fact fleeting. Invisible beams cut through and across the shadows while a quiet sense of exhilaration hung silently in the room. Curator and team alike, previously visited parts of France where Dom Pérignon was born. They collected video and photographic content as if anthropologists re-investigating the past. The coalescence of the project was a merging of visual action and movement along with identity of a brand or even the resulting vintage of a particular year. | | | | How does one translate the taste of a liquid? Contemporary art and the idea of commerciality rarely mix successfully. The two concepts tend to be the antithesis of one another, even if both can sometimes have the uniform goal of communication. Here, the artists were given the opportunity to make a work of monumental quality not so differently from artists of yore who would be commissioned by patrons such as the Medici family. In this instance, a corporate sponsor stepped in to take on that role. One of the major (maybe even obvious) downfalls of a video project this scale is the question of budget. In New York, the New Museum, along with other arts institutions and community based groups, has hosted The Festival Ideas for the New City presenting Let Us Make Cake in spring 2011 along with Flash:Light Nuit Blanche, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, autumn 2011. These projection works were also large-scale, ambitious and outdoors therefore reliant on site-specific elements including electricity, weather conditions, and of course monetary sponsorship. These projects can rarely be made or even viewed without financial backing. | | | | From Leo Kuelbs, curator: "The contemporary art world is going through a merger that spans the whole of society, I think. All types of technology are evolving and increasingly available to everyone from engineers to artists. The reality and need for collaboration and interaction is reflected in projection mapping and this, along with the crisscrossing mergers of science and the arts, is forcing big changes in what people will perceive as “contemporary art” in the coming years.” | | | | In Berlin, Dom Pérignon Creators Event has worked for years, collaborating with musicians, film directors and artists to enable ambitious, site specific, exclusive events that without the budget, may never have occurred or even been made. Divine Coalescence brings the concept of brand identification to another level, maximizing all of the potential of fine art possibility and merging it with technology. Looking around the room, many jaws gaped, as necks bent backwards, eyes towards the dove in flight and the opera star whose neck muscles bulged with a fervent passion for each note. | |
| | For works of this scale, video and site specific, meant only to be shown live once in a specific context, allow for contemplation of the advancements of technology, the historical translation of space via light, and the power of art, whether painted, installed, sculpted or projected. Divine Coalescence carried a short 6-minute moment of various opacities of tinted transparencies, into what felt briefly, like an infinitely false, yet glorious eternity. Previous collaborators with Dom Pérignon include David Lynch and Sylvie Fleury amongst others. Stay turned for upcoming projects by curator Leo Kuelbs and Glowing Bulbs | | | |
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