Spectral Subjects to open in December as part of Project Atrium Series
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — MOCA Jacksonville, a Cultural Institute of the University of North Florida, is pleased to announce its upcoming Project Atrium installation by internationally-acclaimed artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Spectral Subjects, a new installation commissioned as part of the museum’s 100th anniversary celebrations. Using state-of-the-art thermal imaging software, the exhibition constitutes a thermal observatory—a constantly updating map of the room's temperature, projected in the round. As with previous biometric art projects by Lozano-Hemmer, the piece is a call to think of the human body as a continuum with the environment around us.
In the words of the artist, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, “Spectral Subjects is the culmination of years of research on thermal imaging at my studio, trying to make tangible our invisible but essential connection to our immediate environmental context. I am delighted to present this project in the context of MOCA’s 100th anniversary and can’t wait for visitors to complete the artwork.”
Visitors to MOCA Jacksonville can view the installation from December 13, 2024 through June 1, 2025. With this exciting immersive installation, MOCA Jacksonville invites the community to celebrate the conclusion of its 100th anniversary at the Opening Celebration & Preview Event for Spectral Subjects on Thursday, December 12, 2024 from 8-9 p.m.
Project Atrium: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer Spectral Subjects is made possible through the generous support of Presenting Sponsors Joan and Preston Haskell; Major Sponsors Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Z. Duke; Supporter Wende Wilson; and Project Atrium Sponsor Driver, McAfee, Hawthorne & Diebenow, PLLC; along with the support of Centennial Sponsors for MOCA Jacksonville’s 100thAnniversary, including Lauren and Ted Baker, the City of Jacksonville, the Cultural Council of Greater Jacksonville, Inaugural Director’s Circle Members, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Z. Duke, the Jessie Ball duPont Fund, Florida Blue, Joan and Preston Haskell, the MOCA Board Alumni Council, the MOCA Board of Trustees, Brooke and Hap Stein, the University of North Florida, Visit Jacksonville, and VyStar Credit Union. Special thanks to Galeria Max Estrella, Madrid and Antimodular Studio, Montréal.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Spectral Subjects is a new interactive installation designed to transform the Atrium of the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville. The piece constitutes a thermal observatory, showing a constantly updating map of the room's temperature on three colossal wall-projections. Using state of the art Xenics Dione thermographic cameras, the project detects heat and cold in the environment, including visitors’ body heat, the building’s air circulation and ventilation, and inanimate objects. As temperature is detected, the artwork generates a particle system that is a visible manifestation of its dissipation in the museum, showing, for example, how body heat emanates outward and away from visitors and is exchanged with the cooler, air-conditioned atmosphere.
As with previous biometric art projects by Lozano-Hemmer, the piece is a call to think of the human body as a continuum with the environment around us. The skin is not the limit of our body but only its visible limit. Sound, smell, heat, air/breath, biological waste, and even chemical signals in the form of pheromones are constantly seeping in and out across our body's visible limits, our skin, which is incorrectly described as the boundary between the public and the private.
For more than 30 years, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s artworks have been tracking the public using a variety of technologies to create interactive artworks that are, in his words, “incomplete” without the public’s presence. His pieces use biometric technologies such as pulse sensors, fingerprint scanners, microphones, respirators, face detection, skeletal tracking and others. In all cases, the artworks are not meant to create a sinister “portrait” of individuals but to create anonymous “landscapes” of participation, where the goal is to make evident relationships between people and the environment that we all share.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer was born in Mexico City in 1967. In 1989 he received a B.Sc. in Physical Chemistry from Concordia University in Montréal, Canada.
Lozano-Hemmer is a media artist working at the intersection of architecture and performance art. He creates platforms for public participation using technologies such as robotic lights, digital fountains, computerized surveillance, media walls, and telematic networks. Inspired by phantasmagoria, carnival, and animatronics, his light and shadow works are "antimonuments for alien agency".
He was the first artist to represent Mexico at the Venice Biennale with an exhibition at Palazzo Van Axel in 2007. He has also shown at Biennials in Cuenca, Havana, Istanbul, Kochi, Liverpool, Melbourne NGV, Moscow, New Orleans, New York ICP, Seoul, Seville, Shanghai, Singapore, Sydney, and Wuzhen. His public art has been commissioned for the Millennium Celebrations in Mexico City (1999), the Expansion of the European Union in Dublin (2004), the Student Massacre Memorial in Tlatelolco (2008), the Vancouver Olympics (2010), the pre-opening exhibition of the Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi (2015), and the activation of the Raurica Roman Theatre in Basel (2018). Collections holding his work include MoMA and Guggenheim in New York, TATE in London, MAC and MBAM in Montreal, Jumex, and MUAC in Mexico City, DAROS in Zurich, MONA in Hobart, 21C Museum in Kanazawa, Borusan Contemporary in Istanbul, CIFO in Miami, MAG in Manchester, SFMOMA in San Francisco, ZKM in Karlsruhe, SAM in Singapore and many others.
He has received two BAFTA British Academy Awards for Interactive Art in London, a Golden Nica at the Prix Ars Electronica in Austria, "Artist of the year" Rave Award from Wired Magazine, a Rockefeller fellowship, the Trophée des Lumières in Lyon, an International Bauhaus Award in Dessau, the title of Compagnon des Arts et des Lettres du Québec in Quebec, and the Governor General's Award in Canada. He has lectured at Goldsmiths College, the Bartlett School, Princeton, Harvard, UC Berkeley, Cooper Union, USC, MIT MediaLab, Guggenheim Museum, LA MOCA, Netherlands Architecture Institute, Cornell, UPenn, SCAD, Danish Architecture Center, CCA in Montreal, ICA in London, and the Art Institute of Chicago.
In the past few years, Lozano-Hemmer was the subject of eighteen solo exhibitions worldwide, including a major show at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC, the inaugural show at the AmorePacific Museum in Seoul, and a mid-career retrospective co-produced by the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal and SFMOMA. In 2019, his immersive performance “Atmospheric Memory” premiered at the Manchester International Festival, and his interactive installation “Border Tuner” connected people across the US-Mexico border using bridges of light controlled by the voices of participants in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua and El Paso, Texas. Major recent solo exhibitions include “Listening Forest,” which featured his largest collection to date of outdoor works, installed over 120 acres of land at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, “Common Measures,” his first exhibition at PACE Gallery, New York, and “Translation Island,” a 2-km parcours which included ten public artworks, in Lulu Island, Abu Dhabi, UAE.
RELATED PROGRAMS
Opening Preview & Celebration
Thursday, December 12, 2024
Donors 6-7 p.m. | Members 7-8 p.m. | Public 8-9 p.m.
Free
Art & Technology Roundtable Featuring Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
Saturday, March 15, 2025
11 a.m. | Free
MEDIA PORTAL
Press releases, images of the artist’s work and a rendering of the upcoming installation, along with cutlines are available at the link below for use.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/avp4469kkinhymy9bmx4q/AJL-itauiRx8MfqJ-_GMt28?rlkey=79z2rml89kz4x9yqk1ql8xt01&st=3ly8wodi&dl=0
ABOUT MOCA JACKSONVILLE
The Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2024, as the oldest art museum in the region and the second contemporary art museum to be established in the United States. This celebration year is an opportunity for MOCA to give back to the community that has been its home for a century by presenting groundbreaking exhibitions and programs that will engage the community and elevate Jacksonville as a regional destination for arts and culture.
One hundred years ago, a group of visionary local women artists came together to imagine the kind of city they wanted Jacksonville to be — the kind of community they wanted to live in and be a part of. At the core of their vision for a rich, vital, dynamic city were art, culture, and education. Thus, what we now call MOCA Jacksonville was born — first as a series of exhibitions by artists of the day, used as a fundraising tool to support public school education; then as a guild; and later as an art museum and educational leader.
A century later, MOCA’s mission remains focused on the art, artists, and ideas of our time, with a vision that unites education, creativity, and community building in the heart of downtown Jacksonville. Throughout 2024, MOCA will celebrate its centennial year — looking to the past to recognize the legacy of the visionary leaders and important milestones that have brought us to this point; marking this moment with extraordinary exhibitions and programs that will not only elevate MOCA, but provide a stimulus and create an energized destination for our Downtown to build upon; and imagine the future that we want for our great city, nourishing our community through art and culture for the next 100 years.
For more information including hours of operation, admission prices and upcoming exhibitions and programs, call 904.366.6911 or visit mocajacksonville.unf.edu.
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