Tim White-Sobieski
Encyclopedia
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| name = Tim White-Sobieski
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| birth_place = Warsaw, Poland
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| nationality = American
| field = video artist, installation artist, photographer, light artist, painter
| training = New York University, Parsons School of Design
| movement = 21st Century
| works = “Confession” 1999-2002, “Terminal”, 2002-2004, “Before They Were Beatles” 2004, “Alpha” 2005, “Deconstructed Reality” 2006-2007, “Awakening” 2008, “Light Circles” 2009, “The Sound and the Fury” 2010, “Cold Forest” 2010
| influenced by = Federico Fellini
, Andrei Tarkovsky
, Pier Paolo Pasolini
, J.S. Bach, Brian Eno
, Max Frisch
, Jean-Paul Sartre
, William Faulkner
, Samuel Beckett
}}
Bibliography:
| name = Tim White-Sobieski
| image =
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| birth_place = Warsaw, Poland
| death_date =
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| nationality = American
| field = video artist, installation artist, photographer, light artist, painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
| training = New York University, Parsons School of Design
| movement = 21st Century
| works = “Confession” 1999-2002, “Terminal”, 2002-2004, “Before They Were Beatles” 2004, “Alpha” 2005, “Deconstructed Reality” 2006-2007, “Awakening” 2008, “Light Circles” 2009, “The Sound and the Fury” 2010, “Cold Forest” 2010
| influenced by = Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI , was an Italian film director and scriptwriter. Known for a distinct style that blends fantasy and baroque images, he is considered one of the most influential and widely revered filmmakers of the 20th century...
, Andrei Tarkovsky
Andrei Tarkovsky
Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky was a Soviet and Russian filmmaker, writer, film editor, film theorist, theatre and opera director, widely regarded as one of the finest filmmakers of the 20th century....
, Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini was an Italian film director, poet, writer, and intellectual. Pasolini distinguished himself as a poet, journalist, philosopher, linguist, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, newspaper and magazine columnist, actor, painter and political figure...
, J.S. Bach, Brian Eno
Brian Eno
Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno , commonly known as Brian Eno or simply as Eno , is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music.Eno studied at Colchester Institute art school in Essex,...
, Max Frisch
Max Frisch
Max Rudolf Frisch was a Swiss playwright and novelist, regarded as highly representative of German-language literature after World War II. In his creative works Frisch paid particular attention to issues relating to problems of human identity, individuality, responsibility, morality and political...
, Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
, William Faulkner
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
, Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
}}
- Tim White-Sobieski is a video and installation artist based in New York and Berlin.
- Tim White-Sobieski began showing in New York in the early 1990s his “Blue Paintings”. These paintings were visually and aesthetically connected with the artist’s later photo- and video- works like “Presence” and “Runner”, “Venice Vacation” and “Queen Mary”. Emphasis on the role of the unconscious in his paintings had affinities with visual AbstractionismAbstractionismSee also Abstract artAbstractionism is the theory that the mind obtains some or all of its concepts by abstracting them from concepts it already has, or from experience. One may, for example, abstract 'green' from a set of experiences which involve green along with other properties...
and literary ExistentialismExistentialismExistentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
. - In 1995, White-Sobieski started working on his “Moving Paintings” and “Moving Drawings” projects as a series of experiments in image animation which were based partially on lingo scripting language that was used in Macromedia applications. At that period, the artist studied music composition and became especially interested in musical architecture of silence of John CageJohn CageJohn Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
. In response to the Cage's objective to look through sounds and not at them, White-Sobieski created his infinite animations of paintings and drawings as a parallel life of an artwork, “image in process”. White-Sobieski wrote the scripts for programming infinite ways of controlling behavior of shapes, colors and image parameters in a video frame (and in a digital image if not video); some of the work was finalized and exhibited in multiple venues, some never ended and has been frequently dated as ongoing. - One of the most successful experiments in combining "Moving paintings" animation principles with real-time video editing/rendering technique was the project "I repeat myself when under stress", 1999, exhibited in New York, Chicago and Torino. Later the same methods were developed in hand-rendered films from the project “Terminal". Almost each video frame of the series was hand-drawn, and, assembled, created semi-abstract moving compositions. These projects were critically acclaimed at the Prague Biennale 2003, Lyon Biennale (2003) and Bucharest Biennale (2004).
- Most of the work by White-Sobieski, whether photography, video or sculpture, is described by critics as “painterly”. Videos “Presence” and “Runner” (both 1998-1999) were drawn from the World War IIWorld War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
documentary footage. Transferring film onto video and video into photography, White-Sobieski continued a process of cultural abstraction and proved that processes of mediation are potentially infinite. The further he moved in historical time and space, the closer he approached the psychological "truth" of that event Tim White-Sobieski’s compositions offer a meditation on the discussion started by Jean Baudrillard ("history survives its disappearance").
- The subject of genetic memory and the theme of war were also developed in "Confession" (2000-2002), “Before They Were Beatles” (2004) and “Queen Mary” (2005). From "Confession", he started a series of videos with the visual meditation on memory and the postulation that "the memory is perhaps genetically transferred from generation to generation". While "Confession" had a multi-channel narrative sequence and dealt with a twin nomad-figure (as a split personality), the later videos of the artist also examine migrant characters in “Closer to Fall”, “Awakening”, “Route 17N” and “The Sound and the Fury”.
- The “Terminal” series of videos (“Terminal by Day”, “Terminal at Night”, “Terminal Heart” and “On the Wing”) were created between 2001 and 2004. Along with his signature pulsating blues and reds, these videos marked his involvement with the ambient music of various composers including Brian EnoBrian EnoBrian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno , commonly known as Brian Eno or simply as Eno , is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music.Eno studied at Colchester Institute art school in Essex,...
, “frippertronics” of Robert FrippRobert FrippRobert Fripp is an English guitarist, composer and record producer. He was ranked 42nd on Rolling Stone magazine's 2003 list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" and #47 on Gibson.com’s "Top 50 Guitarists of All Time". Among rock guitarists, Fripp is a master of crosspicking, a technique...
and experiments of John CageJohn CageJohn Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
. Between 2004 and 2006, Tim White-Sobieski created several abstract-figurative video compositions: “New York City Suite”, “Vertigo”, and “Desire” among them. The artist continued working in the direction of music-visual synthesis, developing new methods and algorithms to generate color, rhythm and animations based on sound parameters, further developing ideas that were explored in the "Moving Paintings" projects.
- In 2005, three artists were invited to create one art work each for the Louis Vuitton headquarters in Paris: James TurrellJames TurrellJames Turrell is an American artist primarily concerned with light and space. Turrell was a MacArthur Fellow in 1984. He is represented by The Pace Gallery in New York...
, Olafur EliassonOlafur EliassonOlafur Eliasson is a Danish-Icelandic artist known for sculptures and large-scale installation art employing elemental materials such as light, water, and air temperature to enhance the viewer’s experience. In 1995 he established Studio Olafur Eliasson in Berlin, a laboratory for spatial research...
and Tim White-Sobieski. This was a cooperation of the artists under one roof that individually featured work of each one. - "Vertigo" and "New York City Suite" were created based on similar principles of compositions as in the previous "moving drawings" projects, where the final rendered video composition was digitally assembled from hundreds of video clips and digital images assembled from the artist's data bank and released on DVD. The projects later were shown in the following museums: Malaga Museum of Contemporary Arts, ARTIUM Centro-Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporáneo.
- In 2006-2007, White-Sobieski created a series of images of deconstructed cityscapes, eliminating distinctions between design, painting, photography and video (“Deconstructed Reality” and “Deconstructed Cities”).
- In 2007, Tim White completed a series of large scale photographs and a video titled “Awakening” and in 2008, as expansion of the same theme, “Route 17 North”. The series’ near-repetition rhythm constructs a narrative logic while the artist reveals the image of American youth in the beginning of the 21st century, in the world of post-modern simulacra. Both of the videos and photographic series, figurative in nature, demonstrate the influence of literature and narrative filmmaking on the artist.
- In 2009, White-Sobieski completed his short film “The Sound and the Fury” after the first part of the William Faulkner’s novel. The first version of the film was shown in Barcelona as “Seventh Heaven” (based on the subtitle of the literary work - “April Seventh, 1928”). Departing from “Deconstructed Reality” where time appears not sequentially but simultaneously, in “Seventh Heaven” White-Sobieski combines incongruous elements; geometric abstraction is superimposed over semi-abstract human shapes. The artist's work has a reference to the initial writer's idea; Faulkner borrowed his title from “Macbeth”: “It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” In his work, the artist presents a video translation of the main character’s nonlinear, non-interpretive point of view on time.
- Between 2008 and 2011 the artist created several light installation projects; “Nebulae” and “Light Circles” were shown in Germany, England and Scandinavia. These installations include LED-based, computer coded infinite light animations. In addition, the fiber-optic light projects “Lighthouse” and “Cold Forest” incorporated stainless steel compositions. The projects “Light Circles” (2008) and “Garden of Stones” (2009) were based on Seamless Multi-Channel HD Video technology (© tim white-sobieski). Both installations incorporate 16-channel video projections, high-definition synchronized video source, aluminum and stainless steel sculptures, LED-fiber optics light objects, and light program synchronized with video. One of the artist's largest and technologically advanced projects was commissioned earlier by the LVMH/ Louis Vuitton group in Paris for their flagship building on Champs-Élysées in Paris. It is currently the biggest seamless fiber-optics field: the video was rendered at resolution four times exceeding high definition standard.
- In 2008, White-Sobieski created and engineered a video wall with 144 synchronized vertical LCD monitors for Kimpo Airport in Seoul, Korea, currently the biggest video wall in the world. The artist continued developing new methods of controlling and displaying video with the purpose of integration a moving image within architectural interiors and on any shapes, forms and materials.
- In 2008-2010, the main premise of the artist’s work is the interpretation of ideas via fusing video, sculpture, light installations and photography. In particular, his works of this period have always a narrative or literary element ( Visor’d, Garden of Stones, The Sound and the Fury, Cold Forest) and inspired by poetry of Walt WhitmanWalt WhitmanWalter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...
or prose of William FaulknerWilliam FaulknerWilliam Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
.
- The artist’s inventory of video works currently enlists more than 60 titles, with multi-channel synchronized video installations and stand-alone single theater presentations. His works are currently collected by many museums and institutions worldwide: CGAC Santiago de Compostela, Denver Art Museum, Domus Artium 2002, Salamanca, Elgiz Museum of Contemporary Art, Istanbul, Museo de Bellas Artes, Santander, Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, Stiftung kunst:raum Sylt Quelle, Nomas Foundation, Rome, Kunstverein Wiesbaden.
Bibliography:
- TIM WHITE: TERMINAL, Exhibition catalog, Editorial: Museo de Bellas Artes Santander (Santander), Edición: 1ª; Fecha Edición: 2003
- Tim White: TERMINAL, Exhibition catalog, Published by Pilar Parra Gallery, 2003, Edition of 1000, Bilingual (English/Spanish).
- Tim White: CONFESSION, Exhibition catalog, Published by SAVVA books, 2001, Text by Tom Breidenbach and Max Henry, English
- Tim White: GOD BLESS AMERICA. Exhibition catalog, Published by SAVVA books, 1999, Text by Gerrit Henry
- Tim White: PRESENCE, Exhibition catalog, Published by Alexandre de Folin Gallery, 1998, Text by Joshua Decter.
- TIM WHITE-SOBIESKI: AWAKENING. Texts: Sabine Brummer and John Pultz. Galerie Michael Schultz GmbH & Co.KG, Berlin 2007.
- Awakening. Autor/es: White-Sobieski, Tim. Publicación: Madrid : Salamir Creación y Arte, 2006
- Idilio : fantasía y falacia = Idyll : Illusion and Delusion : [ exposición celebrada en]
- Phoenix Kulturstifung/Sammlung, Hamburg, 8 oct. 2006 - 29 abr. 2007;
- DA2, Domus Artium 2002, Salamanca, 5 jun. - 5 agost. 2007 / comisarios/curators: Oliver Zybok, F. Javier Panera, Martje Schulz. Publicación: Salamanca : Fundación Salamanca Ciudad de Cultura / Hatje Cantz, 2007
- Floating forms (Gebundene Ausgabe) von Ulrike Lehmann (Autor), Isabel Wünsche (Autor), Sarah Debatin (Übersetzer), Andrea Fuchs (Übersetzer), Lewis Gropp (Übersetzer), Verlag: Kerber; Auflage: 1 (16. Mai 2006)
- Barrocos y neobarrocos : el infierno de lo bello : [exposición itinerante] Baroque and Neo-Baroque. The Hell of the Beautiful Chief Curator: Javier Panera; Guest Curators: Paco Barragán and Omar Pascual. Publicación: Salamanca : DA2, 2005
- Sky Shout : a pintura despois da pintura : [ exposición celebrada en] Auditorio de Galicia, celebrada entre el 18 de enero y el 27 de marzo de 2005 ; [comisario: David Barro] Autor/es: Auditorio de Galicia . Palacio de Ópera, Exposicións e Congresos (Santiago de Compostela) / Barro, David. Publicación: Santiago de Compostela : Auditorio de Galicia, 2005
- For all = for alle : [ exposición celebrada en] Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium 10.05 - 28.09.03 Autor/es: Vestfossen Kunstlaboratoirum. Publicación: [s.l] : Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium, 2003
- Arquitecturas Urbanas. Fondos de la Colección Paco Barragán de fotografía contemporánea 2000-2003 Published by: Centro Municipal de las Artes de Alcorcón. Madrid Centro Nacional de Fotografía Torrelavega, Santander, Spain
- "No lo llames performance/ Don't Call it Performance". Exhibition catalogue by Domus Artium 2002 (DA2), Salamanca and El Museo del Barrio, New York, essays by Julián Zugazagoitia, Javier Panera, Paco Barragán, Coco Fusco and Roselee Goldberg, 100pp, English/ Spanish)
- No lo llames Performance = Don't Call it Performance : DA2. Domus Artium 2002, Salamanca, agosto-septiembre de 2004 ; El Museo del Barrio, New York, 18 de agosto-7 noviembre 2004 , [Comisariado = Curated by Paco Barragán, Deborah Cullen ; textos = texts Javier Panera, Paco Barragán, RoseLee Goldberg, Coco Fusco]
- Pegadas de luz = Huellas de luz = Traces of light : [ exposición] / [comisario Miguel Fernández-Cid] Autor/es: CGAC, Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea (Santiago de Compostela) / Fernández-Cid, Miguel Publicación: [Santiago de Compostela] : CGAC, 2003
- PHE03 : PhotoEspaña2003, VI Festival de Fotografía, Madrid, 11 de junio - 13 de Julio Autor/es: La Fabrica (Madrid) Publicación: Madrid : La Fábrica, 2003
- ICONES Exhibition Catalog. Shigeru Ban, Sylvie Fleury, Zaha Hadid, Bruno Peinado, Andrée Putman, Ugo Rondinone, James Turrell, Tim White Sobieski. Icons Exhibition from September to December 31, 2006 at the “Espace Louis Vuitton”
- Louis Vuitton: Icons (Hardcover) by Stephane Gerschel (Author), Marc Jacobs (Contributor) Publisher: Assouline (April 2007)
- "Digital Video Art - Kinematics: New Languages; exhibition catalogue. Published by: AFAA, Ministere des Afaires Etrangeres. Text: Laurence Dreyfus Printed: 2003, 162pp.
- 57. festival internazionale del film Locarno. Official Catalogue. 4–14 August 2004. Published by: Festival International du Film Locarno, Via Luini, 3a, CH-6600 Locarno. Editors: Michel Vust, Alessia Fondrini, Carine Bernasconi
- Stati Liquidi. Invideo, video d'arte e cinema oltre. Catalogo di mostra internazionale - International Exhibition of Video Art and Cinema Beyond Lingua, italiano-inglese 2004 AIACE, Milano / 2004 Revolver; Text: Sandra Lischi and Simonetta Cargioli
- rewind << kunstverein Wiesbaden. Felix Gmelin / David Godbold / Marie Holzer / Julee Holcombe / Léopold Rabus / Antonio Riello / Uwe Schnatz / Jorge Villalba / Tim White Sobieski / Cindy Wright. Texts by Katharina Klara Jung and Anja & Andreas Greulich (German and English)
- The Art Fair Age (Spanish Edition) by Paco Barragán (Author), Michele Robecchi (Introduction), Amanda Coulson (Introduction) Publisher: Charta; Bilingual edition (October 1, 2008)
- 2000 Años Luz. Catálogo Galeria Leyendecker, Spain Instituto Oscar Domingez Art Contemporaneo. Essay: Sarah Bernbach. Published by: Centro de Arte La Recova, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain Espacio Cultural El Tanque
- FRAGILES. Catalog: Espacio Liquido Gallery, Gijon, Asturias, Spain. Texts: Fernando CASTRO, Nuria FERNANDES, Fernando Martin GALAN
External links
- Tim White-Sobieski's Official Website
- Tim White-Sobieski's light projects
- Tim White-Sobieski's page at artnet
- Tim White-Sobieski's page on ArtFacts.net
- KunstMarkt.com
- AbsoluteArts.com
- Metropolis Magazine
- KUNSASPEKTE
- Museum Domus Artium 2002, Salamanca, España
- Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Malága
- Elgiz Museum, Istanbul, Turkey
- Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea
- Louis Vuitton's Icons Project
- Wilhelm Hack Museum, Ludwigshafen, Germany
- Basque Centre-Museum of Contemporary Art
- Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden
- Espacio de arte contemporáneo de Almagro
- Lyon Biennale
- Bucharest Biennale
- Prague Biennale
- Ostensee Biennale 2008
- ExibArt
- ArteInformado
See also
- Video installation artVideo artVideo art is a type of art which relies on moving pictures and comprises video and/or audio data. . Video art came into existence during the 1960s and 1970s, is still widely practiced and has given rise to the widespread use of video installations...
- List of video artists
- Experimental filmExperimental filmExperimental film or experimental cinema is a type of cinema. Experimental film is an artistic practice relieving both of visual arts and cinema. Its origins can be found in European avant-garde movements of the twenties. Experimental cinema has built its history through the texts of theoreticians...
- New media artNew media artNew media art is a genre that encompasses artworks created with new media technologies, including digital art, computer graphics, computer animation, virtual art, Internet art, interactive art, computer robotics, and art as biotechnology...
- Music visualizationMusic visualizationMusic visualization, a feature found in electronic music visualizers and media player software, generates animated imagery based on a piece of music...
- Visual MusicVisual musicVisual music, sometimes called "colour music," refers to the use of musical structures in visual imagery, which can also include silent films or silent Lumia work. It also refers to methods or devices which can translate sounds or music into a related visual presentation...
- Video sculptureVideo sculptureVideo sculptures, a type of video installation, involve one or more video screens that spectators move among or stand in front of. Video sculptures formed of more than one screen may broadcast a single program or may simultaneously broadcast different interconnected sequences on several channels....