MAKING LIGHT OF IT

Save the date!  Phil Solomon’s six-channel “Sistine Chapel for the American Dream”, American Falls, will be open to the public from April 10, 2010 through July 18, 2010 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C, with an opening reception to be held a few days earlier on the 6th of April.

The American Falls project, which initially earned Solomon the 2007 Thatcher Hoffman Smith Creativity in Motion Award, is described by its maker as  “…ultimately one of great hope, stemming from a lifelong love for this American experiment of ours that seemed so vivid to me during my (television-infused) childhood; but it is also necessitated by my deepest concern for its present and future directions”.

Finding inspiration in sources as varied as Frederick Church to Diego Rivera to an episode of Star Trek, Solomon applies his lyrically splendent chemical mastery to images both private and public from the collective cultural wellspring to create a solemn trek through past, present and future.

For those with the means to attend it is not to be missed at all costs.  For those perhaps a little less fortunate, you can have the briefest of (limited) glimpses into what the experience has to offer with this video taken from an “abbreviated” presentation at the Untitled ArtSpace that took place from September through November of 2008...

*UPDATE*: Please keep the following message from Phil in mind while watching the aforementioned video below:

"The Untitled Gallery clip is a bit compromised, as they could not get me matching projectors (!) and then would not replace the file once I had color corrected the mismatch, so I learned some lessons there. This was just the first, rather broad sketch, as I wanted to say thank you to the good folks ... Leer másin Oklahoma City who partially funded The Falls with the THS Award. I will post a photo of the Corcoran Rotunda, where there WILL be 6 excellent matching projectors and installed 7.1 sound. As I mentioned, it will run exactly concurrent with a major Muybridge exhibition, a fortuitous confluence of events and worth waiting the 10 years since this project was first conceived---first inspired by the great painting of Niagara Falls by Frederick Church that sits right outside the Rotunda."

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=596868214247