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Artists to “Flood” Old Town Pasadena with Video Installation
Alex Kritselis, Dean of Pasadena City College Visual Arts & Media Studies Division,Teams With Filmmaker Joey Forsyte for Environmentally-Themed Public Art Project
PASADENA, CA—Parts of Old Town will almost literally be flooded with turbulent ocean water when artist Alex Kritselis and filmmaker Joey Forsyte launch “Don’t Blow It/A Rising Tide,” an environmentally-themed public video-art installation, on Dec. 17.
Thousands of holiday shoppers are expected to see the strikingly beautiful, multi-channel video work, featuring 13 projectors and visible on 13 glass doors and windows throughout One Colorado. This shopping square on Colorado Boulevard is bounded by the well-traveled Fair Oaks Avenue to the West. New videos will be added weekly.
One projection shows sloshing ocean water—perhaps it’s rising?—within the unexpected context of what used to be a popular brewery and restaurant. The crystal clear, aqua colored imagery, which subtly alludes to melting ice caps and global warming, will be projected from inside of the empty eatery onto its facade.
Kritselis, dean of Pasadena City College’s (PCC) Visual Arts and Media Studies Division, is collaborating on the project with Forsyte, his wife, a producer, director and director of photography who shot the videos in high definition with state-of-the-art digital equipment. Both creators embrace ambiguity and nuance. They’re not out to hit anyone over the head with an environmental SOS but they hope that the beauty of the imagery challenges viewers’ thinking about how we use our planet’s resources.
“We hope people see how beautiful the world is,” Kritselis says, “to remind us of what we’re trying to preserve. Mostly we hope to seduce viewers into taking time for contemplation and seeing something anew by melding the moving image with the existing architecture. We also like the element of surprise.”
Indeed, a video planned for Christmas week shows what seem to be two everyday candles. But when Kritselis and Forsyte’s enormous heads slowly appear to blow them out (in a reference to the air we breathe and the energy we use as humans), the tapers suddenly look fit for the Jolly Green Giant’s dinner table.
Likewise, in addition to adding new videos weekly, the artists will improvise like jazz musicians by playing with different combinations of imagery within each week. Repeat visitors can expect to see completely different presentations throughout the installation, viewable from sunset to 1 a.m. daily through Jan. 3rd. A special Rose Parade-related video, likely to feature living roses, is in the works.
Kritselis is a painter and sculptor by training who grew up in Athens gazing daily at the Acropolis outside his window. He has used PCC’s administration building as his canvas for several previous video installations presented in conjunction with ArtNight, a city-wide celebration of the arts. Projecting imagery across 32 windows in the massive 300-foot wide structure, these undertakings were dazzling for their scale, but seen mostly by students and faculty.
With “Don’t Blow It/A Rising Tide,” Kritselis and Forsyte wanted to bring the experience into the center of town and to a more diverse audience—which could swell to one million with the Rose Parade. One Colorado is on Colorado Boulevard, the parade route, and bounded on the West by Fair Oaks.
Conceptualizing and editing the videos together, the artists believe that public art has the power to draw people together.
“We’re very interested in how public art can help build community,” says Forsyte, who has created video installations for New York’s Museum of Modern Art and Munich’s modern art museum, the Pinakothek der Moderne. “Maybe you smile at a stranger or share a look of bewilderment as you both engage with the work. Either way, the more we interact, the more tolerance and appreciation we have for each other.”
All of the installation’s videos were shot with a Canon EOS 5-D Mark II or 7-D, a groundbreaking digital camera created for photojournalists who required video capability as they traveled around the world. The digital projection equipment was provided by PCC’s New Media Center.
About the Artists:
Alex Kritselis’ painting, sculpture and video work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions in Athens, Paris, Stockholm, Paris, Los Angeles and around the country. Kritselis has been a board member of Pasadena’s Armory Center for the Arts since 2005. He received his Bachelor of Fine Art from the Academy of Art in Athens, a Master of Fine Arts in painting and sculpture from Hornsey College of Arts of the Middlesex Polytechnic in London, and completed post-graduate studies in sculpture at L’Accademia Di Belle Arti in Florence, Italy.
Joey Forsyte, president of Velocity Filmworks ,has worked as a producer and cinematographer for more than 20 years on music videos, feature films, documentaries and commercials. Her work has aired on the BBC, PBS, Bravo, A&E, The Sundance Channel, HBO and Fox and screened at the Cannes Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, and the Venice Film Festival. She is a graduate of New York University’s film program.
“Don’t Blow It/A Rising Tide,” a public video-art installation by Alex Kritselis and Joey Forsyte, runs Dec. 17 through Jan. 3, Christmas and New Year’s Day included, from sunset to 1 a.m. daily. The artists will be present on Dec. 17. Videos will be shown at the courtyard and Smith Alley quadrants of One Colorado, the retail and restaurant area on Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena bounded by Fair Oaks Avenue, Union Street and Delacey Avenue; and at 39, 35 and 29 Fair Oaks Ave. Free. For information about One Colorado: http://www.onecolorado.com.
Download still photographs taken from “Don’t Blow It/A Rising Tide” videos.
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