In Middle Sticks, the viewer enters a deep blue room with black benches placed around the perimeter of four walls. A large print hovers just above the floor in the middle of the space, appearing to be in constant motion as video is projected onto it from above. Buckholtz transforms a Miró painting by placing a print of it on a motor, then shaking the camera while filming, in order to translate the color of the paint into light. The result is luminous.
Middle Sticks explores the concept of moving light, and its ability to enliven aspects of objects and space, to create a dynamism that would otherwise remain hidden. By sampling the color palette of a painting and translating a static work into a time-based poetic abstraction, the piece investigates Buckholtz’s interest in what lies beneath that which is visible in full stationary light. A once-familiar painting is transformed into a mesmerizing, shifting, chromatic spectrum.
Elaine Buckholtz has worked as a lighting and visual designer in the Bay Area for 20 years; she has also worked with Merce Cunningham and Meredith Monk. Her most recent work utilizes video and light in relation to sculptural forms, digital prints, and preexisting sites in architecture and nature. She has shown work at the Claremont Museum in Southern California; the San Jose Institute for Contemporary Art; Y2Y Gallery, The Luggage Store, Fusion Art Space, and the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, all in San Francisco; Pierogi Gallery in Leipzig, Germany; the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University; and the Sun Valley Center for the Arts in Idaho. Buckholtz holds MFA degrees from California College of the Arts, San Francisco, and Stanford University.