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A site-specific camera obscura installation by Richard Torchia employs primitive optical systems to represent the forward flow of time and light
Slought is pleased to announce "Grotto," a camera obscura installation by Philadelphia-based artist Richard Torchia. The exhibition will be on display in the front gallery at Slought Foundation from April 5, 2007-May 23, 2007. The opening reception will take place on Thursday, April 5th, 2007 from 5:00-7:00pm, with a public conversation with the artist at 6pm. Please note that this installation is dependent upon natural light conditions and may change over the course of the day.
Since 1990, Richard Torchia has worked extensively with the camera obscura developing applications of this archaic optical device for specific locations and organizations in relation to available subjects and views. Instead of employing camera lenses to record imagery to be reviewed at some other time and place as with chemically fixed or digital photography, Torchia employs primitive optical systems to represent the forward flow of time and light. The glance toward the past encouraged by photography is replaced with a rootedness in the present moment as well as anticipation for imminent events occurring at the selected site. Grounded in research, experimentation, and a reverence for conditions as given, his work seeks to "perform" that which is being depicted through the act of viewing its formation as a live image.
Responding to cavelike nature of the front gallery at Slought, a cast concrete exhibition space, "Grotto" presents the viewer with complementary views from the window at the front of the gallery and the flow of illuminated water dripping from the utility sink at the opposite end of the room. Two lenses positioned at either corner of Slought's storefront throw live images toward the opposed walls framing the large window and the gallery's signage panel. This sheet of frosted glass, which ordinarily serves as a diffusing screen blocking views of the street, is thus rendered transparent. Viewers inside the gallery are able to survey the passage of pedestrian and vehicular traffic, in addition to changing weather conditions, transformed into a panoramic flow across three screens. At the other end of the gallery, lenses directed at the porcelain sink project images of the water dropping from the tap illuminated by a spotlight. Enlarged, inverted, and multiplied, the flow of drops from the tap strives to become a fountain.
Together, these live projections make subjects of an empty gallery, as well as the pedestrians that may or may not become its viewers. Foregrounding in this way the various conditions of spectatorship, the work becomes a literal response to both the physical venue that is Slought, as well as its curatorial program that is grounded in interventionist approaches, problem solving, and critical practice.
Based in Philadelphia, Richard Torchia (b. 1958) has developed projects for Historic Eastern State Penitentiary (1997-2001), Evergreen House (The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 2006), the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (1994), and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (1990) where his work is included in the permanent collection.
In 1997, the Center for Creative Photography (Tucson, Arizona) presented a suite of live projections entitled "The Waving of Foliage, the Coming and Going of Ships". Torchia has also exhibited his work internationally in group exhibitions such as "Container 96" (Copenhagen, 1996), "EAST International" (Norwich, England, 1997) and "Pilot2," in conjunction with the Frieze Art Fair (London, 2005). In 2002, he collaborated with architect John Tuomey on a project for the Gallery of Photography, Dublin. "A Key to the Garden" (2002-05), his pavilion for at the Morris Arboretum (University of Pennsylvania), invited visitors to study an inverted panorama of the Butcher Sculpture Garden.
Grants include a Pew Fellowship in the Arts (1994) and fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation. Since 1997 he has been director of Arcadia University Art Gallery, Glenside, Pennsylvania.
"Two shimmering, translucent screens hang in the tall alcoves of a small library, hiding light-blocked windows and telescope lenses that work together to create a haunting camera-obscura effect--projecting live images of the trees outside as ever-changing, upside-down silhouettes. The trees' inverted branches echo root structures, and the chandeliers hanging behind the screens add mysterious shadows to the images. The piece is beautiful--it would be beautiful anywhere--but at Evergreen, a mansion that feels made for mystery and intrigue, it feels like gazing back through time."
-- J. Bowers, on Torchia's "Views of Baltimore (after Covarrubias)," an installation at Evergreen House, 2006