About the Artists
Mikel Frank and Gerard Amsellem
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About Visual Passion: On Love
Visual Passion: On Love is a creative, multimedia, interactive, installation project that will be created and installed in July 2012 at 1978 Maplewood Arts Center in Maplewood, NJ.
We have been working on projects together for only 2 years but have discovered a shared vision. We are both deeply passionate about the arts and the visual arts in particular. With this project:
Visual Passion: On Love
We will delve into territory that begins to break down the traditional ways of looking at and experiencing art. Instead of going into the gallery and only looking at work on the walls, we have developed a different approach that will include installation, interactive community involvement, performance, video presentation and interviews as well as traditional live painting and two dimensional display.
Visual Passion: On Love
A Collaboration
By Artists: Gerard Amsellem and Mikel Frank
Official Proposal/description:
Location: 1978 Maplewood Arts Center, 1978 Springfield Ave., Maplewood, NJ
Dates: Sunday, July 1 through Sunday July 29, 2012
Open Hours: The artists will be working each weekend in July. Open public hours will be Saturdays and Sundays 2pm to 5pm. T
he Visual Passion Experience will take place beginning Thursday July 26, 6pm to 9pm and run Friday, Saturday and Sunday July 29, 2012, 2pm to 9pm with a closing reception Sunday night beginning at 6pm.
Purpose: To create an organic, multimedia, interactive ART environment and experience exploring the topic of visual passion and love installed at 1978 Maplewood Arts Center, Maplewood, New Jersey during the month of July 2012.
The Project: “Visual Passion: On Love” will exhibit the light side of love and the dark side of love. In the front windows the artists will install two environments having to do with the light side and dark side of human interaction and love. On the middle walls of the gallery the artists will be working together on live collaborative painting projects throughout the month. In the rear of the gallery the artists will set up a stage in front of the left wall with a projection wall behind it where they will show films and interviews about love and passion. On the right rear side of the gallery an interactive painting station will be set up for visitors to paint on 12”x12” canvases their own visual interpretations of love. These paintings will be made into a mosaic and exhibited throughout the run of the show. There will also be a blackboard wall that the artists call “the writing on the wall” where visitors will have the opportunity to write or draw their personal interpretations on love.
The Visual Passion Experience: From Thursday evening, July 26 through Sunday July 29, 2012 the public is invited to have the complete visual passion experience. This will begin a four day, public interactive, multimedia art collaboration/narrative. It will be the culmination of and introduction to the world of love through the collaborative efforts and creative eyes of these two artists. The goal is to engage members of the public in a multimedia art reality quite different than the standard gallery going experience. There will be interactive elements such as real time video where the public can record comments, actors who will interact with the public, live performance pieces, musical and other artistic elements so that the visitor can be fully immersed in the Visual Passion Experience.
Films: In conjunction with the Visual Passion: On Love project the artists will be showing The Passion of Joan of Arc. Composer and musician Richard Einhorn has given the artists permission to use his soundtrack Voices of Light with the screening of The Passion of Joan of Arc, a Carl Th. Dreyer film from 1928. Mr. Einhorn will be appearing to give insight into how the passion of Dreyer's vision inspired Richard's, Voices of Light.