Sallyport - The Magazine of Rice University - Winter 2002

Rice Gallery: One saw; the other saw.- Through the Sallyport
visitors seemed to delight in getting to know the work’s idiosyncratic ways
of responding to their movements and locations.
On view simultaneously in the small gallery, an earlier work by Steinkamp,
Flutter Flutter (1997), brought into focus her central concerns and interests.
A small, faintly quivering grid of white light was projected in the corner of
the room. The grid seemed to shift between one-point and two-point
perspectives so that viewers walking around the piece would perceive the
transformation of the grid as if, Steinkamp explained, “the nonphysical
projection had physical substance.” Toying with the conceptual divide
between the virtual and the real, the physical and the immaterial, Steinkamp
characterizes her creative process as “using light to dematerialize
architecture.”
The deadpan narrative title of Steinkamp and Johnson’s installation, One
saw; the other saw., announced the work’s probing of the dynamics of
perceptual experience. “The piece is about looking and about shifting
perspectives,” Steinkamp noted. “The work is intentionally playful; it
creates an experience where complex ideas about perception can be enjoyed
on a playful level.”
While Steinkamp’s work is included in the permanent collections of such
major museums as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., she also has been
tremendously successful in the commercial field, having created large-scale
works for U2 concert tours and the Fremont Street Experience in Las
Vegas. Jimmy Johnson performs with the electronic music group Grain,
which has released numerous recordings on the labels Fragrant, Moonshine,
and Astralwerks.
—Maria Stalford
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