‘The Guiding Dark’

THE GUIDING DARK

The light escapes the darkness. Through the line it shines to illuminate the truth of conciousness. Dark is the essence from which all life has become. Even the light was born of darkness. Searching to flee the all encompassing, the light grew, a flower out of rock. It became a spark, then a flicker and then a beam. The beam became a line, and the line grew to define shape. Those shapes came to expose a world that pulsates color and writhes with the echoes of the dark. That world is our world, a world of possibilities and heroes, epic and commonplace. There are jungles of flora and concrete, citadels of bark and stone, inhabited by warrior and beast. There is magic in these lines. Each interlaced patchwork of light is a window. Each box is a portal.
First there was drawing. Gold, white, but mostly silver, against the black of paper. Then the concept to make the art emanate light. A window painting came to mind and how the light streamed between the line-work casting patterned shadows over the topography of a room. To reverse that effect was the idea: the light would shine through the lines, instead. To achieve the effect, a light box would be constructed of pine and birch, of plexi and steel, of stain and varnish, of light and darkness. In an immaculate tuxedo of black, the box would sit, shining a spectrum of color where its milk plexi shirt remained bare. Thus the drawings became light, stories contained in black coffins, rotating doors to another dimension.
Conceived by contemporary Brooklyn painter and muralist, Misha Tyutyunik, and constructed by fellow artist and maker, Luciano Fontanez, the boxes are a testament to innovation. Presented by Tambaran Gallery, steps away from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the exhibition will contain ten hand crafted light-boxes, as well as the original drawings that inspired them. ‘The Guiding Dark’ aims to draw parallels between ancient and modern art, through process and content, as well as re imagining the gallery atmosphere as we know it.