Sunday, October 31, 2010
Mark's stream of thought on Dance and Photography.
How can i explain this rush? .. this purity
this is living instrument of art
dance is the most elementary of the arts
pure and honest to the medium
it is a connection with man and childs deepest past
it confirms a immortality of arts bringing pure wine from an ancient vineyard, it makes me high
the dancers of BNC make me cry its soooo beautiful.
there is a spirit connection with the past
i am a gushy romantic
there is magic made by impressions of the body movement and music
imprints of gesture of love and passion
beauty supreme beauty chasing beauty
desire ... ahhh desire
our sin and our soul
romanticism love and death
eroticism and death
little deaths
pushing away
returning
making the soul remember
beauty of the body and nature stirred to ecstasy we dance
subtle gesture and movement passed to and into the viewer
"the slender infragible thread of the eternal tradition of beauty" -Shaemas O Sheel- said in the 1901 Book of Dance.
Lovers of dance have shared with me a leaf slowly falling in the wind.. or dancing across the ground.
It can make my day seeing that leaf fall in perfict form and beauty passing through light and time .. it touches deep inside like i have seen magic.
Sitting watching these dancers this same feeling rushes over me.
It is a timeless magic in motion. It touches your soul.
it taps into something that words or pictures just fail .. is it in my DNA ? is it my genes tapping into a spirit of the past?
It makes me weak and i just weep.
Listening to Alex talk to the dancers about dust gently landing on your arm or quoting Proust and studies in visual emotional transfer to one human to the next how that was writen hundreds of years ago and now science is proving it with electronics that monitor the brain.
He spoke how just the littlest gesture of the splay of the tips of your fingers will carry directly into and felt by your viewer.
This spoke directly to me.
This is what i work with ..emotional transference in photography.
I conceptualize the image in my mind, I pose myself i play the part i feel the part and demonstrate this to the model with theatrical projection to demonstrate the mood. I then step behind to black curtain to look at it on glass. An experienced model will understand and feel the story being told and project this knowing her lines of beauty and mixing that with my vision and story.
It is glorious when the two meet. This shares with a corriographer and dance.
I find many parallels to 19th century staged photography and dance.. I make wetplate photographs because they are true to the medium and very pure.They are a direct link to the past. They take no electricity no mechanics other then a simple box with a hundred sixty year old glass lens to focus light on to a plate of silver to where shadows are fixed forever. It is magic , objects made immortal.
But i struggle with stopping motion in dance ..motion cut into pieces arrested it doesn't work. Its like showing a musician playing music with no sound .. its empty.
So this is a challenge.. and i respectfully bow my head that the medium i work with cannot document this art work and it is rude to try.
But i share feelings of passion that staging a creation a fantasy does share a common goal and it can touch the soul when is it honest and pure. Artists know when they have made this almost divine connection.
Like a dream finding that point a timeless moment of love ...a connection ..just a simple gaze upon beauty.
For me ..A face, Two bodies meeting ..that fluid connection of wrapping together and stopping for a moment of connection... there ..there is a blink of a chance.
A face piercing through the camera lens straight into your soul.
Long exposure showing movement has different story to tell. light is sliding along the body like water. It tell of the movement passing like a spirit passing.
Its not reality but its a document of the motion passed. Here thier is magic in the abstraction of movement. Letting go to chance and allowing movement to paint a picture never seen before.
Time and light as a river together. Its something we are all passing through together, our bodies and life in constant motion. Dance turns this ride into breath taking beauty. The lines created in the long exposures are gestures of this time and form passing by.
Photographers are documenters and collectors. Painters, sculptor's and choreographers/ dancers work with passion and love and total devotion to the craft to make this creation like a child, then hand it off rarely or never to be seen again in that original form.
This is a gift to us of something pure so beautiful. Its given to you for but a brief fleeting moment .. it touches your heart then is gone.
Mark Sink
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Chasing the Sublime
Visual Artists + Choreographers
Chasing the Sublime
a shared experience in art
November 5-14
Three choreographers pair with three visual artists to apply their skills and imaginations in a pursuit of the horizon. Chasing the Sublime is BNC's first co-production with Lakewood Cultural Center. The project will open with a ga...llery exhibit at the Cultural Center, continue with a public discussion, and culminate with three world premiere ballets in November.
www.bncdance.com
www.Lakewood.org/CulturalCenter
Lakewood Cultural Center
470 S. Allison Parkway, Lakewood, CO 80226
Friday, November 5 – 8pm
Saturday, November 6 – 8pm
Sunday, November 7 – 2pm
Performing Arts Complex at PCS
1001 W. 84th Avenue, Denver, CO 80260
Friday, November 12 – 8pmSaturday, November 13 – 8pmSunday, November 14 – 2pm
Visual Artists + Choreographers
Mark Sink +Kristen Hatgi + Alex Ketley
www.kristenhatgi.com
www.gallerysink.com
www.alexketley.com
Laura Merage + Sarah Tallman
www.lauramerage.combncdance.com/stallman
Mark Allen Henderson + Garrett Ammon
www.markallenhenderson.combncdance.com/gammon
Friday, October 1, 2010
Denver Post Review
Showing of Mark Sink's photos just scratches surface
Posted: 10/01/2010 01:00:00 AM MDT
Indeed, a strong argument can be made that at 52, he is the city's most accomplished photographer of his generation.
Unfortunately, a survey of his 35-year career on display at the Byers-Evans House Gallery does not fully back such an assertion. But that has more to do with the organization of the exhibition than the substance of his work.
Sink, in conjunction with staff members at the museum, chose to present highlights of his career, offering snatches from 12 series within his work ranging from revivals of vintage techniques like the cyanotype to pioneering experiments with early digital photography.
This approach makes clear the innovative and stylistic breadth of his work, but it shortchanges the depth of his artistry and supplies little in the way of curatorial judgment about the strengths and weaknesses within his output.
It is easy to imagine an entire exhibition devoted to Sink's insider looks at Andy Warhol and the heady New York scene that surrounded the artist-provocateur in the 1980s. Sink met the artist during a visit to Fort Collins in 1981 and briefly became a part of his circle.
Some of these Warhol-related pieces, which have been shown in recent years at the Colorado State University Art Museum and Rule Gallery, have a snapshot immediacy to them while Sink inbued others, such as "Andy in L.A." (1981), with a more formal look.
Especially noteworthy within this body of work is what he calls his "Polaroid Famous Face Series" — informal portraits of New York celebrities that have a paparazzo spontaneity that still seems very contemporary.
A dozen of these Polaroids are on view, but, again, it is easy to envision a whole gallery devoted just to the series, along with more recent
ones that Sink has taken of Denver art-world notables. A 20-year constant in Sink's work has been his use of Dianas — cheap, plastic cameras that produce a kind of soft, Pictorialist effect that the photographer has long fancied.
Included are 10 Diana-produced black-and-white images, including moody views of Central Park, Gramercy Park and the Brooklyn Bridge from the 1980s and '90s.
It is disappointing that the show includes just two examples of Sink's photograms, which are among the most striking subgroups within his output. These images are created by placing objects directly on photographic paper and exposing them to light, an approach popularized by Man Ray and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy early in the 20th century.
He used different kinds of bottles and glasses for a number of these images, such as "Wine Glass" (1996), creating an otherworldly, glowing effect. And in others, such as "Stars No. 1" (1996), he sprinkled flour, baking powder, salt and dust on the photographic paper, resulting in images that look stunningly celestial.
Despite whatever shortcomings this show might have, it does provide a quick, useful overview of Sink's work to date and, equally important, it whets the appetite for more.
Perhaps it will spur another institution, such as the Denver Art Museum, with its new photography department, to undertake a more considered look at an essential figure in Denver's contemporary photography scene.
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com
"mark sink photographs 1975-2010: encounters with the past."
Photography. Byers-Evans House Gallery, 1310 Bannock St. On view are nearly 50 black-and-white and color images spanning the noted Denver photographer's 35-year career and highlighting the diverse techniques and approaches with which he has worked. Through Oct. 31. 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays. Free. 303-620-4933 or historycolorado.org/be.mark sink gallery talk.
11 a.m. Saturday. Free.wet-plate collodion photography demonstration with sink and kristen hatgi.
Noon to 3 p.m. Oct. 16. Free. 303-620-4933 or historycolorado.org/be.Read more: Showing of Mark Sink's photos just scratches surface - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/art/ci_16209425#ixzz117U630WV
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