Raphaele Shirley - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Raphaele Shirley is a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

-American artist.

Overview

Raphaele Shirley is a multi-media artist whose work spans installation art, light sculpture, video, art collectives and social intervention. Her work deals with questions of space, time and primordial life forces and the ephemeral. Since her beginnings in New York City (1993) where she currently lives and works she has been instrumental in the creation of several largescale social projects such as [PAM] Perpetual Art Machine and the New York International Fringe Festival. She has been awarded several grants recently from the Norwegian arts council for commissioned public and video works. Several of the projects she has been involved in have received international acclaimed awards. She shows her work nationally and internationally.

Early Life

Raphaele Shirley is the youngest of a family of three. In her early teens, she moves to Aix-en-Provence where she begins to explore various art forms. Very early on, she develops an interest in sculpture

Sculpture

Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...

and photography

Photography

Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...

. In the early 90s, she enrols at the Ecole des Beaux Arts of Aix-en-Provence

Aix-en-Provence

Aix , or Aix-en-Provence to distinguish it from other cities built over hot springs, is a city-commune in southern France, some north of Marseille. It is in the region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, in the département of Bouches-du-Rhône, of which it is a subprefecture. The population of Aix is...

, France.

Assistant years

Between 1997 and 2002, she worked under Nam June Paik, the US based Korean artist and founder of video art, assisting him in the development of a number of public laser works which were displayed at the Olympic Park Lake in Seoul Korea and in his Retrospective "The World's of Nam June Paik" at the S.R.Guggenheim, New York U.S.A. and Bilbao, Spain.
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Curator/Social Interventions

In 1997, Shirley was a founding member of The New York International Fringe Festival

New York International Fringe Festival

The New York International Fringe Festival, or FringeNYC, is a Fringe theater festival and one of the largest multi-arts events in North America. It takes place over the course of two weeks every August, spread across several neighborhoods in downtown Manhattan, notably the Lower East Side, the...

and co-directed Fringe Al Fesco, which staged over 100 artists for the first two year's of the festival in public locations all over the Lower East Side in New York. In 2005 she co-founded the project [PAM] Perpetual Art Machine, an interactive installation and video collective of over 2000 members and video artists.

Body of works

In the last few years, Shirley has been concentrating her artistic efforts towards pure light sculpture. Her most recent permanent light sculpture Shooting Stair is installed outdoors in a private collection in South Hamptons New York and involves high pressured mist and light diodes forming a staircase made of light. She has been exploring pure geometry as in her recent solo exhibition at the Chelsea Art Museum

Chelsea Art Museum

The Chelsea Art Museum is a contemporary art museum located at 556 West 22nd Street on the corner of Eleventh Avenue in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City....

in May 2010 where she created two crossing rectangles of light called " Light Shot 0910".

Some of her recent commissions include Stargaze in Sandnes (2011), a 14 minute high definition video in which she employs a "detournement" of found family Super 8 and 16mm films provided by the families of Sandnes, Norway and creates a fictional story based in topographical maps and 3d animations which explores ideas of utopia, memory and time. This project was funded by KinoKino Art center in Norway as well as the Norwegian council.

Another recent commission is Jewels of Kvinesdal (2009), a public art installation which was curated by Torill Haugen at the Utsikten Kunstsenter Art Center in Kvinesdal

Kvinesdal

Kvinesdal is a municipality in the county of Vest-Agder, Norway.Kvinesdal was established as a municipality on 1 January 1838 . Feda was separated from Kvinesdal on 1 January 1900 but again merged with Kvinesdal on 1 January 1963. Fjotland was also merged with Kvinesdal on that date...

, Norway

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

.The piece involves an outdoor arena, overlooking the Kvinesdal

Kvinesdal

fjord

Fjord

Geologically, a fjord is a long, narrow inlet with steep sides or cliffs, created in a valley carved by glacial activity.-Formation:A fjord is formed when a glacier cuts a U-shaped valley by abrasion of the surrounding bedrock. Glacial melting is accompanied by rebound of Earth's crust as the ice...

and a powerful Xenon light which shoots a beam which into a 9 meter diameter disk which can be seen from several kilometers away.

Jewels of Kvinesdal was preceded in 2008 by the Sunken City (Basel

Basel

Basel or Basle In the national languages of Switzerland the city is also known as Bâle , Basilea and Basilea is Switzerland's third most populous city with about 166,000 inhabitants. Located where the Swiss, French and German borders meet, Basel also has suburbs in France and Germany...

) and the Sunken City Episode II – New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

and in 2007 by Sunken City Preludes which was presented by PowerHouse projects in Brooklyn

Brooklyn

Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...

, New York

New York

. These projects take root in the study of architecture and imaginary spaces reminiscent of ancient cities or cities far in a utopian future.

Shirley has exhibited her art works at the Moscow Biennale, the Chelsea Art Museum

Chelsea Art Museum

The Chelsea Art Museum is a contemporary art museum located at 556 West 22nd Street on the corner of Eleventh Avenue in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City....

, New York, the Video Lounge at ArtBasel Miami 2006, The State Hermitage Museum

Hermitage Museum

The State Hermitage is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. One of the largest and oldest museums of the world, it was founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great and has been opened to the public since 1852. Its collections, of which only a small part is on permanent display,...

in St. Petersburg Russia.

Shirley recently particiapted in the residency The Arctic Circle lead by the FARM Foundation in 2009 and 2010 and created a body of time based earth works documented through digital photography, while sailing in the Arctic.

Raphaele Shirley lives in Brooklyn, New York.

External Links

Trong Gia Nguyen interviews Raphaele Shirley ArtSlant Artic Circle Project
PowerHouse Projects Interview with Raphaele Shirley by Astrid Persans