Summary

When we think, we become conscious of our ideas as images within our mind. But while seeming to exist inside our head, these images are also drawn from our experience of the world outside of us and they are formed in relation to these experiences as visual perceptions of potential "realities".

Project Description

This installation explores the double scope of reenacting the artistic event of Marcel Duchamp's chess game with a nude opponent, as well as the visualization dynamics of thought that occur as a relation between the concrete, spatial dimensions of the chess game and the imaginative projection of possible moves in the mental space between the two players.

In the same way that the players envision in front of their eyes their next moves, we are invited to become observers of the interrelational dynamics between the visual realm and internal consciousness. Like daydreamers, we bring into our consciousness visual and mental images that appear overlaying as if existing somewhere in the space between what we see and what we imagine. This exhibition invites us to collectively identify with this invisible and imaginary space at a conscious level.

During the course of this exhibition, I will be playing chess with naked opponents while students at Gage will be practicing another form of visualization through sketching the chess game scene. My hope is to provoke an awareness, as if apparent, of the imaginative dynamics pertaining to both chess playing and drawing.

Special Thanks to Douglas Merrell and Pino Cherchi.