Artist Gareth Long will present two new series of works this month at the Susan Hobbs Gallery in part of a new exhibit titled Gareth Long: Delaware Abstract Corporation. The first, a set of large-scale lenticular prints; and the second, a series of rubbings.
In the lenticular prints, Long focuses on the liquidity of the medium. In his process of creating the works for this exhibit, the artist generated a waterscape using 3D software (ocean and river geometry modelled using a combination of mathematical models and direct observation). These rendered animations are then set into motion using the particular properties of lenticular technology, emphasized by undulating waves of colour bands. Inspired by coastal photography of Fogo Island and the Delaware River in upstate New York, Long produces a series of “copies.” However, as each lens and its inconsistent densities are unique, the lens itself produces what he calls an “optical fingerprint.”
The rubbings, produced by coming into direct contact with a surface (the plaque of a company that determines legal ownership of properties) found by Long in Delaware County, were also located in upstate New York.
The State of Delaware is best known for being a tax haven where countless companies incorporate even though they have no connection to the state itself. Although not in the State of Delaware, these rubbings are physically linked to a real place, then, but at one remove, evoking the shadowy no man’s land of a place where corporations are sited, without being on site.
Gareth Long: Delaware Abstract Corporation.
