Wendy Wischer: Escaping Gravity

The Screening Room presents Escaping Gravity, a new body of work by Wendy Wischer. With these three new pieces, a sculpture, a video and a multi-media installation, Wischer turns her focus more directly to nature, reflecting poetically on our surroundings, the cycle of life, as well as the major signals of our current environmental issues.

“Wischer’s dreamlike projections take the viewer on a sort of a cosmological, sensual and metaphysical journey. Her multi-sensory environment is concerned with the crossroads of nature, technology, science, mythology and personal identity. She integrates an intense laborious craft with technology-oriented devices in order to create references to spatial planetary landscapes beyond our daily experience […] Fascinated by the conflicting and magical realms between the physical and the imaginary, Wischer brings together two approaches to matter—the physical and the conceptual—while fusing the material and the immaterial. Her spectacular works thus provoke philosophical and spiritual thoughts.” (Tami Katz-Freiman, excerpts from “Wendy Wischer Goes to Winnipeg,” Small Format, ArtCenter/South Florida, May-June, 2015.)

Escaping Gravity represents fragments of Wischer’s journey to free herself from gravitational pulls, both physical and emotional. Through the use of sound and video mapping, one mound of rocks sits on the floor and the other suspends from the ceiling, mimicking cairns or path markers. With these mounds defying gravity as if on another plane, Wischer explores her shifting relationship with nature and with herself. To complement, a haunting video explores notions of shifting landscapes and a sculptural piece questions the possibility of reversing an oil spill. With this new body of work, Wischer finds herself at a crossroads, confronting gravity’s pull.