July 8 through August 26, 2017
Opening Reception: Saturday, July 8, 7-10PM
It is obvious that Jesse K. Phillips’ family is quite important to him. The ambient sound installation that fills the entire gallery at Bermudez Projects | NELA/Cypress Park includes the heartbeat of his newly-born daughter, recorded while she was still in utero. Aptly titled Entrance, it is one of two pieces honoring Phillip’s daughter. The other is Simone.
But the ground-breaking show he calls Limina is far more than just a domestic affair. It is a multi-media carnival of the abstract, which, with the flip of a switch, turns into flashing, living environment of color and sound, of music and antic art.
It is all about identity and how we perceive it.
On view through August 26, 2017, Limina presents ten interactive light and sound “stations” that will awe and delight.
As Phillips says, “Limina is an entrance into the cusp of transition, a threshold of consciousness. It’s a middle stage full of ambiguity around points of reflection. Equipped with an evolving loop, the gallery is the transitional state. Ten pieces of composed music are paired with corresponding LED light screen sculptures to represent ‘the points of reflection.’”
That is to say, a state of flashing lights of transitioning, mutating colors, unexpected shapes, both startling and evocative, as the gallery transforms and unifies itself into a son-et-lumiere tunnel of action and motion.
Adds Phillips, “Limina is meant to be a place to slow down and reflect on the culmination of the experiences that shape our identity.”
Phillips explains, “Light and sound have direct energetic properties as well as an ability to evoke emotion and memory. They penetrate and absorb playfully communing with our experience. They shift and lure, guiding our awareness to places unforeseen. They seem to beg for interaction, asking us to impart our perception onto their own use of time and space.”
Phillips’ ontological creations somehow question the very meaning of being itself and of our experience of reality as well.
He cites one of his favorite creative influences, boundary-breaking English musician Brian Eno, to help explain.
According to Eno, “The functional identity of things is a product of our interaction with them, and our own identities are products of our interaction with everything else.”
With its inspired singularities, the sights and sounds of Jesse K. Phillips’ Limina both demand and reward such interactions from its audience.
Jesse K. Phillips (b. 1985) is a sound-based multimedia artist and composer. Through a decade of touring and recording in bands, Phillips took more of an interest in composition, writing, and the profound relationship between music and other forms of art. He is one half of the experimental audio/visual duo NUBU, focusing on short-form abstractionist music videos. His most recent score is the soundtrack for the film STEPS (2017). In September 2016, Phillips made an immersive soundtrack for the group art show SPACELAND III | Aftermath at Bermudez Projects | DTLA. Introducing new opportunities for sound and space, he has begun to work in a gallery setting to create enveloping, sound-driven installations. Phillips lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
Bermudez Projects is a multi-platform arts program dedicated to increasing public access to the visual arts through exhibits, publications, events, video and sound, and social media. Its mission is to present dynamic works by the next generation of contemporary American and international artists.
