FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

OH THE WEIGHT OF IT ALL
A Rooftop Media Installation Show
August 25th & 26th 2006 (Rain Dates: September 1st & 2nd)
Rooftop, 210 Cook St. Bushwick, Brooklyn. Exhibition opens at sundown each evening.

On August 25th & 26th Ian Epps, Darrin Martin, Shana Moulton, Blithe Riley, Eva Teppe, and JD Walsh present a series of looping video and sound works designed specifically for rooftop installation. Centered on the theme “gravity,” the works collectively comment on the physical and psychological impact this invisible force has on human navigation and perception.

Sound artist Ian Epps premieres his new sound sculpture, Untitled in which balloon-like ‘Ashrams’ float suspended in the air. Headphones link the listener to the object broadcasting Epps’s new original compositions. The piece is both meditative and metaphorical evoking an illustrative study of an individual’s personal sanctuary, dream-like states of emotional release, and the conflict of being firmly planted to the ground.

Darrin Martin’s new work was initially inspired by a book-on-tape version of James Gleick’s Isaac Newton bought at a truck stop. His video Sensorial Principia, “celebrates the specialization of knowledge through the rubbing of an iconic pinnacle of scientific achievement against the artistic ambivalence of the human body.” Martin’s work questions the access points, as well as the goals of the producers and distributors of human knowledge.

Shana Moulton’s video Inside the Mountain Where Everything is Upside-Down presents an interior space that resembles a familiar domestic setting but exhibits physical properties that defy the laws of nature. Household rituals meant to reduce stress trigger a disruption in the space-time continuum, causing objects in the room to have supernatural properties. The bewildered protagonist unsuccessfully attempts to restore natural order to the space until she accepts its irrational logic.

Blithe Riley’s site-specific video projection uses looping repetition to highlight the labor of repetitive action. In Wat(h)er Fall, a performer moves through an old twenty-foot metal frame defunct water tower base, in an endless and goalless journey. The journey is broken into time frames, mirrored by the structural frames that dissect the physical object.

In Half Asleep, Eva Teppe works with various modes of extremely decelerated motion. By manipulating footage of “base-jumpers” performing their skydives, the artist dispels all sense of the danger posed by such reckless leaps. The “base-jumper” is made to look like a diver gliding through a fluid biotope, giving the impression of a sleepwalker, This mood is further heightened by the soundtrack composed by Finnish musician Mika Vainio.

In JD Walsh's Weekend, leisurely city dwellers engage in various weekend activities. The electronically removed background emphasizes and exaggerates the mundane tasks that we know as "free time". Actions become unhinged from their environments, gestures freed from governing laws of physics and society. For Oh, the Weight of it All Walsh presents "Weekend (reprise)", a two-channel version, in which these gestures are presented alongside those found in interior spaces, further complicating role of the body in and out of doors.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES

Ian Epps is a Sonic/Visual Artist whose explorations are invested in how an object speaks, utters, and dissolves itself within its given surroundings. His work has been exhibited in the Walker Art Center, Lovebytes Biennial (Sheffield, UK), A.I.R. Gallery (NYC), EYEDRUM (Atlanta, GA), and SIGGRAPH 2004 (Los Angeles, CA). He has performed alongside and in collaboration with Rafael Toral, Andrew Deutsch and Pauline Oliveros, Ogurusu Norihide, among many others. Epps’s recent releases can be found on SoftL Music, Grain of Sound, Powershovel Audio, On;(do), and Seasonal.

Darrin Martin’s videos and performances have shown internationally at festivals and museums including the MOMA, the DIA Center for the Arts, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Arts, Pacific Film Archive, and the European Media Art Festival in Germany. His installations have exhibited at venues such as The Kitchen and WRO Media Arts Biennale in Poland. Martin also frequently collaborates with Torsten Zenas Burns building diverse speculative fictions around reimagined educational practices. Their videotapes are distributed by Vtape in Toronto.

Shana Moulton’s videos feature her character Cynthia who has psychic adventures with her home décor, and whose orthopedic dresses reveal her anxieties and strange inner fantasy worlds. These videos are distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix as part of their emerging artist series. Her work has screened at exhibitions and festivals in Pittsburgh, New York, Toronto, Amsterdam, Paris, the United Kingdom, Germany and Sweden. Moulton attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and just completed a two-year residency at De Ateliers in Amsterdam.

Blithe Riley is an artist working with video, performance and installation. Her work has been screened nationally an internationally at venues such as Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center in Buffalo, NY, Pittsburgh Filmmakers, The Warhol Museum, and Regina Miller Gallery,in Pittsburgh, PA as well as The European Media Arts Festival, in Germany. Riley received an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University in 2005. In addition to her own work, she has organized and programmed video screenings since 1998, including the formation of Press Play Video Series in Pittsburgh, PA.

Eva Teppe currently resides in New York for a one-year studio scholarship from the Hess Cultural Foundation. Her latest video work was screened at a group show called Portraits - The View Behind The Make-Up at the Gallery Anita Beckers Frankfurt (Germany). In 2005 she participated at the ARS Electronica Linz listening between the lines. Teppe’s film and video regularly shows at international film and video festivals including the 33rd International Film Festival Rotterdam (NL), Transmediale Berlin (D), 16th Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival, Chicago (USA), and European Media Art Festival, Osnabrück (D), 25. Filmfestival Max Ophüls Preis, Saarbrücken (D)).

John Daniel Walsh is an artist based in Brooklyn. He received his BFA from Alfred University and an MFA from Bard College. His work has been included in group and solo shows internationally. In 2005, his piece Life Expectancy Test was on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as part of Tony Oursler’s Studio: Seven Months of my Aesthetic Education. His solo show Display, was held at Solomon Projects gallery in Atlanta. His video sculpture Weekend was purchased by the High Museum of Art in 2003, and his work has been reviewed in Sculpture Magazine, Art Papers Magazine, New Art Examiner, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He has taught at the Cooper Union School of Art, Atlanta College of Art and at New School University’s MA program in Media Studies.
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