Photo Flash: Preview Cynthia-Reeves Projects' CONNECTIVITY Installation in Charlotte

CYNTHIA-REEVES Projects announces the installment of its fifth annual off-site exhibition, Connectivity, in partnership with the McColl Center for Visual Art in Charlotte, NC, on view through June 15, 2013. Scroll down for a preview!

Connectivity follows a string of innovative exhibitions spearheaded by the gallery since 2009, as a way of expanding the gallery model, and focusing on specific and timely issues and/or artist's works. For Connectivity, more than a dozen CYNTHIA-REEVES artists were invited to address the gallery's long-standing interest in the convergence of art and science, drawing inspiration from observations taken at both the macro and micro level. Many of these artists works are featured in one of the country's most significant new contemporary corporate art collections housed in Charlotte - a collection that features over one hundred pieces of artwork that was both curated and project-managed by CYNTHIA-REEVES.

Connectivity's thesis draws parallels to the unique inquiries voiced by several exhibiting artists, including John Grade, Janet Echelman and George Sherwood. Each of these artists has significant large-scale artworks on view currently at museums and public art installations throughout the United States.

John Grade approaches sculpture with both their creation and their decay firmly in mind. Grade's sculptures are built from natural materials and often they are exposed to weather and the seasons to see how the materials are impacted by nature. Inspired by the erosion of the natural landscape, each piece is created in a way that will speed up its own decomposition and become what Grade describes as "an interesting conversation" between the landscape and the sculpture.

John Grade began his Fold series in 2010 - sculptures created from meticulously configured wood "cells" connected by resin. The original sculpture won the top award at the Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City that year. The two original sculptures in the Fold series are currently interred, one in Idaho, and the other in the high desert of the southwest. Grade's intention is for these sculptures to reflect their integration into the ecosystem and to show the impact of rain, erosion, insect life, and temperature. Control, the third in this series, represents the sculpture in its original state. Grade recently opened an installation, Capacitor, at the John Michael Kohler Art Museum; and a 60-foot installation at the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle. A new public art project for the City of Portland, OR will be opening in July.

Janet Echelman builds sculpture environments that respond to the forces of nature -- wind, water and light -- and become inviting focal points for civic life. Exploring the potential of unlikely materials, from fishing nets to atomized water particles, Echelman combines ancient craft with cutting-edge technology to create her urban-scale artworks. Experiential in nature, the result is sculpture that shifts from being an object to a complete, immersive environment.

"Expanding Club, 2007" is an extension of her acute instincts for innovation. Its construction involves the use of traditional net-weaving techniques used by Indian fisherman, combined with the knowledge afforded by a team of aeronautical and mechanical engineers, architects, landscape architects, lighting designers and fabricators.

A recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, Echelman was named Architectural Digest's 2012 Innovator for "changing the very essence of urban spaces." Her TED talk "Taking Imagination Seriously" has been translated into 33 languages and is estimated to have been viewed by more than a million people worldwide. Janet Echelman will be the keynote speaker at the International Sculpture Center's annual event in Miami during Art Miami Basel Week in December 2013.

George Sherwood applies his engineering acumen to the challenge of kinetic sculpture. His organic forms, shaped from stainless steel, are finely pitched to respond to the slightest movement of air. The steel brings a lustrous reflectivity so that light and wind act in concert. It is a choreography based on inspiration and engineering. As Sherwood explains, "Each sculpture is a three-dimensional painting of shifting light, drawing all the colors of the environment, pulling down the sky, drawing up the earth and gathering everything in between. It is the light, after all, that we see and process, not the physical object."

Sherwood's Seismic Memory, the artwork on view in Connectivity, involves bringing the elements of wind and light to the indoors - discreet elements are finely balanced on a grid of stainless steel, allowing each to respond to the slightest current of air. The overall surface of the artwork shimmers and undulates, mimicking the activity one observes on the surface of water.

Sherwood just opened Wave Cloud, a thirteen-foot tall outdoor installation at the Christian Science Plaza in Boston; his work Everything In Between was recently acquired by the Dana Farber Cancer Institute for their newly dedicated 20th and 21st Century Contemporary Art Collection in Boston, MA.

Connectivity is an evocative concept with profound connotations. It bespeaks of the linkage among various complex levels of organic life-the avenues by which energies are communicated; the implicit idea that all inspiration shares common threads; the invisible interweaving of thought, action and creativity. In support of this philosophical inquiry, each artist shares a unique vision on the dynamic potential of "connectivity".

A full list of artists includes: Janet Echelman, Yizkah Elyashiv, Beth Galston, Beth Ganz, John Grade, Daniel Kohn, Jonathan Prince, Shuli Sade, George Sherwood and Claire Watkins.

CONNECTIVITY Installation (Courtesy of Ben Premeaux, Photographer, McColl Center for Visual Art, Charlotte, NC)

CONNECTIVITY Installation (Courtesy of Ben Premeaux, Photographer, McColl Center for Visual Art, Charlotte, NC)

Fold - John Grade

Janet Echelman (Photo Credit: Becky Borlan)

CONNECTIVITY Installation (Courtesy of Ben Premeaux, Photographer, McColl Center for Visual Art, Charlotte, NC)

CONNECTIVITY Installation (Courtesy of Ben Premeaux, Photographer, McColl Center for Visual Art, Charlotte, NC)