Ventura County Reporter
Art & Culture
April 5, 2007
http://www.vcreporter.com/article.php?id=4484&IssueNum=118
Copyright ©2007 VCReporter.com. All rights reserved.
Art times two
by Stacey Wiebe
Upfront Gallery
"Blink" by Matt Furmanski
Copyright ©2007 Matt Furmanski. All rights reserved.
There's more to a metallic sphere than meets the eye.
Suspended from the ceiling in what appears to be nautical netting, a row of blinking industrial orbs draws the viewer into the kind of thoughtful contemplation that can only lead to the concept of dichotomy. Especially if you're perusing said orbs/buoys with their creator, Matthew Furmanski.
Blink, a solo exhibit and installation by Furmanski that is on exhibit at Ventura's Upfront Gallery through April 7, is many, many things. One of those things is a visual manifestation of the semi-organic merging of industrial objects and the natural world that they, like everything else, are necessarily part of.
"With almost all my work, I like the intellectual or conceptual component to be as compelling as the visual component," said Furmanski, who added that, while all of his work is loaded with meaning, he prefers that viewers attach their own meanings, meanings which can change from day to day and viewing to viewing. (Furmanski happens to be both assistant professor of sculpture at California State University, Channel Islands, and vice-chair of Ventura's Public Art Commission).
"I don't want someone to come in thinking that they get it or don't get it," he said. "I want it to be an exploration."
Furmanski's work combines the industrial and the natural, which is an element of the exhibit that can appear more implied than blatantly obvious. Furmanski beautifully combines the two elements in a series of photos in which he launched a buoy-like orb, complete with blinking light, into the ocean at night and photographed the path the orb's light took using long exposures. The result is a series of nighttime shots imbued with ephemeral beauty.
The end product of Furmanski's work is a manifestation of the concept that science and art can engage in visual dialogues of utter beauty ‹ but again, the message is in the eye of the beholder.
"With a lot of the work that I do, a component of it is very precise, and takes a lot of planning and measuring and math," Furmanski said. "What comes after is the intuitive part."
For more details and information on hours of operation, contact Upfront Gallery, 267 S. Laurel St., at 805-240-1448, or 805-405-4954.
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