A morphing Frank Stella

source: vimeo

This project combines the influences of Frank Stella and James Turrell.
Inspired by the series ‘concentric squares’ by Frank Stella, in which every square frame has a different color, in my work I am trying to replace the coloring of the frames with light. To realize this, the ‘light picture’ has to take on a three-dimensional form. James Turrell was one of the first artists to color whole rooms with light, playing with and teasing our perception. These rooms lost their three-dimensional form and appeared to be like a colored canvas. I am using this phenomenon on every tier of my project, thereby losing the depth perception and making the sculpture look like a picture.
Additionally, by choosing certain color combinations, the different frames of the project leap into the foreground or the background (red will jump into the foreground, blue will jump into the back ground). The ‘picture’ becomes alive.
Only by looking at it from the side will it be possible to see how it was built and realize the depth of the sculpture/picture. The picture will always be in motion with constant changes to its color
combinations. This is why I chose the name ‘a morphing Frank Stella’.
Programming: Michael Helmbrecht
Film: Richard Dahlmann
Music: Stephie Krah
Sponsoring: led-studien
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source: digitaliaartpl

Betty Rieckmann was born in Palo Alto, California, in 1986, and moved to Germany as a child. She studied art at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe, where she discovered light as a medium of artistic expression. After completing her degree there, this interest in light led her to Hildesheim, where she pursued a B.A. in light design from 2011 to 2014 at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HAWK).

Ms Rieckmann has already presented her work at several exhibitions throughout Europe. “Light is the purest form of visual art, the reduction of visibility.” as she says lets you get a glimpse of why she is so fascinated about light. In some of her light paintings for example “a morphing Frank Stella” she transforms the colours of the canvas into light, setting the painting’s static colour effects into motion. The question she poses is “How can I paint with light?” In order to integrate light sources into the work, Rieckmann has layered square frames over one another in a concentric trapezium, such that the colour fields are transformed into coloured light spaces. Modern LED technology, which also makes differentiated gradations of grey possible, is controlled through special software. The light of the individual levels is thus continually altered at random, generating a limitless number of colour and spatial combinations. The work is made up of an endless number of light works, each of which appears only for a brief moment. This is art at the intersection of construction and contemplation: beautiful, fleeting and fascinating in the constantly renewed recurrence of light.