Exhibition
Erika Blumenfeld
In the spring of 2005 Ballroom Marfa hosted two solo exhibitions, simultaneously, from different artists, Moving Light: Lunation 1011 from Erika Blumenfeld and The Folding Nose and Other Works from Richard Erickson.
Blumenfeld was Ballroom’s inaugural artist-in-residence in the fall of 2004. Through a very special partnership with the McDonald Observatory, Blumenfeld was granted the opportunity to carry out her residency and live on site at the Observatory in one of the astronomer’s houses. During her two-month stay, Blumenfeld created her very first video work, titled Moving Light: Lunation 1011.
Lunation is defined as the mean time between two successive new moons, and the corresponding lunation number is calculated beginning with the first new moon that occurred in the year 1923. Her piece, titled 1011 for the actual lunation cycle she documented, explores the waxing and waning of moonlight over a 30-day period, documenting an entire lunar cycle from new moon to new moon.
Imaged through an altered telescope and self-built recording devices, Blumenfeld documented the varying intensities of light radiating from the moon onto handheld photographic film. The resulting images portray not only the quantity of moonlight in its nightly phase, but also the artists own hand which, holding each piece of film over the long two-minute exposures, moved slightly from her own heartbeat and body’s subtle sway.
The relationship between technology and the human implementing it is expressed in the completed video installation, where each of the exposures taken over the 30 days were animated in sequence to produce a 4-minute moving account of the lunar cycle. The viewer experiences the completed piece, which is the entire lunation cycle, as a mesmerizing shifting of light that slowly pulses, as if breathing, over time.
Lunation 1011 (30 Recordings) is a print edition based on the video installation Moving Light: Lunation 1011. The piece operates like a calendar of the 30-day lunar cycle, where each of the 30 recordings in the print is one of the still images that comprise the video itself.
Artist Bios
Erika Blumenfeld
Erika Blumenfeld is an internationally exhibiting artist originally from the Boston area. After studying at Parsons School of Design in New York and La Sorbonne in Paris, Blumenfeld relocated to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she has worked since 1994. In 1998, she developed a process by which she reduces photography down to its most essential ingredients: light and light sensitive material. The presentation at the Ballroom marks the first solo exhibition of her video work.
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