The beginning of language.   Fabric throat, wax book with projection (2005)	Detail (video still) Click to see video in throat (3MB, MPG4 for Quicktime) Click to see abridged version of above

Gillian Brown: Five works on becoming

Brown’s fragile magic recalls the charm of lantern shows, stereoscopic slides, and shadow puppetry, configuring images as conjurer’s tricks…     Fred Camper, Chicago Reader

Might we wake up because of a distant starburst? Or could we be stirred by the pythagorean theorem floating into our world? Does the universe begin anew as we awaken? Such magical interweavings are suggested by “Seed formations,” one of my new works at Flatfile Galleries in Chicago.

My new series of sculptures incorporates translucent objects and surfaces onto which imagery from a single projector evocatively floats and multiplies. Thematically this group of work is informed by: creation myths from around the world; recent scientific work on how existence comes into being (including cosmology and string theory); and my own sense of how something comes out of nothing in our consciousness and our perception. One work aligns scientific talk (early big bang ideas) with magicians' hands pulling things out of thin air. *In another my voice muses about how there was nothing in the beginning, but really this nothing was a sort of nothingness (or "somethingness"). Meanwhile the video for this piece shows reverse footage of smoke rings dissolving. Amorphous smoke gathers to form rings, or zeroes--a sort of nothingness that is something. Both of these pieces have their humor while they also evoke wonder. Another work conflates the birth of the physical world with waking up. For a fourth work, a stream of metaphorically connected imagery, suggesting emergent thoughts, is projected on a translucent shell-shaped “brain” suspended in a wire-frame head. **Lastly in “The beginning of language,” a small wax and paper book resides in the throat behind a translucent fabric sculpture of a mouth and neck. Onto this book are projected images of birds flying off from the center whose flights are timed with the Sanskrit vowels being whispered on the soundtrack. They are mirrored rorschach-like on both pages, suggesting both vocal chords and vertebrae, as they disappear.

In philosophical moments cosmologists ask: Why is there something instead of nothing? To this cognitive scientists might add: How is there something instead of nothing? All cultures have developed myths and stories addressing these questions. I am enchanted by all these explorations, as I informally reflect on how it is that my own thoughts manifest.

There was nothing(2005) Click to see video on blackboard (7MB MPEG4)		Seed formations(2005)

In the beginning(2005) Click to see video (9MB MPG4)

For more information: www.gillianbrown.com

For Inga Frick's paintings in Parallel Play : www.ingamccaslinfrick.com