George Legrady: Refraction

“Refraction is the change in the direction of a wave when it enters a medium, for instance, a ray of light entering water. Hypermnesia is a state of highly developed memory, based on registering experiences by associating them to mentally created images. In-between these two states of transformation and invention lies interpretation and the unfolding of narrative” – George Legrady

Edward Cella Art & Architecture announces a solo exhibition of new work by internationally exhibited multi-media artist George Legrady. Entitled Refraction, the project includes eight black and white compositions, each consisting of three different photographs interlaced together with a lenticular process. The exhibition additionally features an installation presenting two new dynamically generated animations. Using his unique processes, Legrady creates a suite of works in which movement alters the narrative potential of the image. Abigail Solomon-Godeau, a noted critic and photograph historian, describes the photographs, “as an ensemble of images, [where] meanings are produced between among and beyond the formal groupings of each composition and the three photographs; thus, the viewer may conjure other stories that seem to arise mirage-like from within and across groupings.” Ms. Solomon-Godeau’s essay is featured in the catalog that accompanies the exhibition.

Known for his ambitious interactive installations, photography and data visualization projects, Legrady’s artwork of the past twenty years has focused on the exploration of photography, computational technologies and their potentials in developing new forms of visual expression.

Legrady’s Refraction project consists of eight panels that explore the aura of the photographic image. Using pictures taken by the artist at the onset of his career, he transposes them into a contemporary context through a printing technology that creates the illusion of transition between images simply by the spectator's changing the angle from which the image is viewed.

The resulting ambiguity opens the potential for movement to investigate and expand our understanding of cinematic experience. Drawing upon the visual aesthetics of French New Wave Cinema, Legrady creates an experimental situation with the viewer.

George Legrady was born in 1950 in Budapest and raised in French Montreal. He received his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. George Legrady is currently a professor of interactive media arts at UC Santa Barbara. His early artistic work focused on a conceptual and semiotic analysis of the photographic image. Legrady’s contribution to the photography and digital media field since the early stages of its formation into a discipline in the early 1990's has been in intersecting cultural content using various processes as a means of creating new forms of aesthetic representations and socio-cultural narrative experiences. His work is has been exhibited widely including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Centre Pompidou and most recently at SOMArts Center in San Francisco.

EXHIBITION PROGRAMS

In Conversation: Erin Cressida Wilson with George Legrady
Saturday, November 12, 2011 / 4pm
Join Erin Cressida Wilson, an award-winning American playwright and screenwriter, author and professor, as she leads a conversation with artist George Legrady about the creative process of screenwriting and the construction of narrative in both fine and cinematic arts. Considering parallels between photography and cinema, the discussion will consider the assembling of images, ideas and stories by artists and filmmakers as they create their artwork to engage audiences dynamically.

Erin Cressida Wilson is an award-winning and internationally produced playwright, screenwriter, author and professor. She received 2003 Independent Spirit award for her screenplay, “Secretary,” starring James Spader and Maggie Gyllenhaal, and her other screen credits include “Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus,” “Chloe” and a pilot project for HBO with Oprah Winfrey. Additionally, Wilson has written stage plays, musicals and operas that have been performed regionally and internationally at the Mark Taper Forum and The Brooklyn Academy of Music among others. She is a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences where she sits on the Writer’s Executive Committee and is currently the Director of the Writing for Performance Program at the University of California at Santa Barbara.