Abroad: Diana Thater's Peonies

Diana Thater's exhibition "Chernobyl" opened this past week at Hauser & Wirth in London. "Chernobyl" is an impressive video installation about the nuclear disaster that occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine in 1986. Rather than using editing cuts to convey Chernobyl's landscape Thater opts for film layers, superimposing images on top of one another. In doing this, Thater avoids linear time created by a sequence of images, in favor of time that is sculptural and has depth.


In an adjacent room is Thater's video installation "Peonies." As with "Chernobyl," "Peonies" also utilizes film layers, depicting 3 ghosted peonies on 9 video monitors. To make the video, Thater used her Standard 8mm film camera, which allows back-winding of film, to shoot a true double exposure of the flowers. The layers in "Peonies" were made with analog materials, as opposed to"Chernobyl," whose layers were made digitally. Regarding "Peonies," Thater states that she wanted to make the viewer aware of the difference between analog and digital techniques. Digital techniques may be analogous but they are never identical to the analog techniques they emulate. For example, digital media is pixelated and has only a finite number of colors. Analog media, on the other hand, provides an infinite spectrum of colors - many of which the eye cannot register.


To hear Diana Thater talk about "Chernobyl" and "Peonies" click here.

The Gallery & Los Angeles: Behind the Scenes - Diana Thater catalogue and National Wushu Training Center II

Now available at RAM Publications and 1301PE is Diana Thater's catalogue Between Science and Magic. The catalogue includes installation images of Diana Thater's "Between Science and Magic" (2010) as well as documentation of the work's production. In addition to an interview between Diana Thater and Pernilla Holmes, there is an essay by Helen Varola following the history of the illustrious trick 'pulling a rabbit out of a hat'. According to Varola's essay, this illusion began with a notorious incident surrounding "the bizarre pregnancy of Mary Toft," a woman who in the early 18th century faked giving birth to rabbits, a deception she even performed for the king of England.

Reversible book jacket for Diana Thater's Between Science and Magic

Installation of "Between Science and Magic" at the Santa Monica Museum of Art

The Gallery: One Room, One Work Part One

Getting ready for 'One Room, One Work,' a rotating group exhibition in three parts. Each part will feature three individual works in three separate rooms. The works included in the first part are Diana Thater's Dark Matter (2004), Fiona Banners' Spell (2002), and Laurence Aberhart's Morepark (Bird Skins Room #3) (1995).

Exhibition poster

Fiona Banner, Spell

Gels on the window for Diana Thater's Dark Matter

Abroad: Printing Diana Thater's catalogue in Auckland, NZ

Below are images from Brian's trip to Auckland, New Zealand to oversee the printing of Diana Thater's catalogue Between Science and Magic.

A piece by Robert Hood at the 4th Auckland Triennial

Perfect flat white