bitforms gallery

LINCOLN SCHATZ
CONVERGENCE OF MEMORY: VARIABLE MEDIA STUDIES
SHOW DATES: 4 15 04 – 5 29 04 OPENING RECEPTION: 4 15 04, 6-8PM

The diaphanous sculpture sees you and responds. Your image becomes a layer of collective memory, time has collapsed…

For his second solo show at bitforms, Schatz has developed a series of interactive video works which function as alchemists of memory. Through computer vision, video is stored, recalled and manipulated by the participants movement. New meanings are established through the collision of images. Each work can store decades of ongoing memory, heralding a new generation of art.

Schatz’s larger multi-screen interactive sculpture “Inter-View”, adroitly merges sculpture and new technologies, though the poetic manipulation of memory and use of translucent materials. “Sophie” a wall mounted single screen interactive piece, provides an intimate interaction between the participant and the work, intimating its presence in a domestic environment. Exemplifying the versatility and adaptability of the software and idea, Schatz is presenting three large framed studies. They investigate the potential to: network his software globally to hundreds of interactors, link ten subway stations across the Chicago transit system with large projections on the tunnel walls and explore the redesign of the United terminal at Chicago’s O’Hare airport creating forty interactive zones. While two of the studies show examples of specific sites, it is clear that the ideas can be adapted to a wide range of locations. Following in his home town motto, Schatz has made no small plans.

“New technologies offer us the chance to truly change the course of art and art history” says Schatz. He has created work which will grow and change over time, based on interaction. Like people, it keeps a large database of recent events, and a much smaller database of distant events.

Lincoln Schatz is a new media artist and sculptor who has been based in Chicago since 1986. His work includes digital animations, large scale sculpture and installations, works on paper, Plexiglas, and canvas. He has exhibited extensively throughout the United States and Europe, most recently at ARCO, in Madrid. Upcoming shows include exhibitions in Switzerland, Germany, England and Seoul. On the occasion of his1996 exhibition at Galeria Ferran Cano in Mallorca, Spain Achille Bonito Oliva, Director of the 1993 Venice Biennale wrote the introductory essay to his exhibition catalog. His work is included in numerous private collections in the United States and in Europe including the Runnymede Sculpture Farm in Woodside California, and the Collection of Ernesto Ventos Omedes in Barcelona, Spain. Lincoln received his bachelors degree from Bennington College in Vermont in 1986 and was subsequently awarded a Core Fellowship to Glassel School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Texas. He has been a visiting artist at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., Rice University in Houston, Texas and at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.