IKON. Žilvinas Kempinas

In order to enter the exhibition I must go through a mixed media installation.
A video of a forest in gray scale is projected on to walls and the slim, white, wooden or plastic sticks that block the room and create a path.
The floor is glossy and black.
I enjoyed the journey, yet it felt a bit disorientating.

The following room contained 3 installations and multiple colorful ink paintings.
All the installations were had movement in them. 
2 installations on the floor had magnetic small spheres that kept re organizing themselves , constantly moving.
1 installation consisted of a metallic barrier on the floor around the installation and a fan on the ceiling that was working and a piece of tape that was trapped in the airflow of the fan and was moving constantly changing it’s shape.
I believe the ink paintings of the walls represented the movements that the installation was performing.
    
The last room was dark. It took me some time to get used to the lights there.
Black and glossy strips of plastic have been hanging down from the ceiling, the room was painted in black.
There were 5 pieces in mixed media hanging on the wall, 2 on the left, to on the right and one at the start of the room.
At  the end of the room was another mixed media installation what constantly chaotically moved.
 

Žilvinas Kempinas is a New York based Lithuanian artist.

Comprising a number of installations it is characteristically elemental, representing and embodying natural phenomena such as light and the circulation of air, with an emphasis on movement made by both visitors and kinetic works in the exhibition.

Kempinas’ work involves unprecious everyday objects and materials, and he is most renowned for using unwound videotape. It appeals to him not only as an ‘abstraction’ of moving imagery, but also because of its distinct physical qualities.

Ideas of movement, in its pure kinetic state or as a trace of movement that has already happened, are developed through the artist’s work. His new installation, made especially for Ikon, involves an upside-down video projection of a ride through forested landscape, a mass of metal rods (tripods) painted white and arranged on a high gloss black floor. It combines viewers’ movements through the space and formal density to result in a controlled environment that is immediately disorienting. Characteristically Kempinas is playing a smart aesthetic game, sharing something that is as wonderful as it is real.

I enjoyed this exhibition. It gave me the sensation I was longing for since last year after Mat Collishaw’s exhibition at the Walsall gallery.
The aesthetic in his work is something I wish to explore this year. 
I went to see this exhibition 3 times for the time it was up.
I also purchased a book with his works.
This exhibition felt like a journey through different worlds, the aesthetic forest like installation at the start, a place with different types of movement and a supreme final trip to the dark room with these otherworldly objects that looked like planets/microorganisms.
This journey through dark to light and then to dark again.
The dark room was hard to orientate in if due to sudden lighting change, yet it felt so immersive.