Filter : by Frederick Ellenberger

The Cincinnati Arts Association’s Alice F. and Harris K. WESTON ART GALLERY in the Aronoff Center for the Arts announces three new exhibitions: Filter, a site-specific installation that investigates the transmission of light and color by Frederick Ellenberger, addresses, for the first time, an area of the Aronoff Center beyond the traditional confines of the gallery; Irato, a highly imaginative sound installation by Anthony Luensman inspired by the acoustic elements of the gallery’s upper exhibition space; and The Diaries of Little Red Hen, the latest installment in Michael Scott’s whimsical yet satirical series of paintings that presents a colorful cast of bird characters set within a tableaux rich in contemporary commentary and art historical references.

In the course of research for a commissioned work involving super magnets, I discovered a cache of small, transparent candy–colored discs which were used as packing filler. I was immediately taken with the inadvertent color vibrations these simple discs were registering with me. This was the beginning of a core re-examination of my personal color theory. My first attempt was stamped ink paintings on high gloss paper stock, followed by collages using the actual found discs. In order to heighten the translucency, I began to experiment with embedding the discs into a clear polyurethane medium, eventually adopting a poured, cast, polished prototype which I showed at the Weston Art Gallery’s Stacked exhibition curated by Matt Distel in Sept.-Nov. 2000.

During the installation process, I started thinking about the glass planes of the Aronoff’s corner façades for a larger extrapolation, and settled on the pierced grid of the north façade for the optimum placement. The strict formal squares of these windows resonated with me for a logical, organized system of presentation; anchoring the color fields and allowing the viewer to visually bounce around the "keyboard" of this Cesar Pelli building’s façade.

During the daylight hours, the northern sky backlights the windows and transmits the color into the deep white interior channels, creating a glowing colored stream on the interior atrium view. At night, the permanent interior lighting of the channels reverses the effect, causing the matrix to glow when viewed from the street and plaza. Along with the dynamic optical bounce of the grid, the color filters capture the emotional essence of each day’s weather. The viewer can witness how the light is affecting the filter, the building, the world, themselves.

The colors of the filters serve as a vehicle for the light, each with its own tenor or voice. As a visual experience, FILTER is based on simple color and light perceptions, with both daytime (natural) and nighttime (artificial) lighting aspects, viewable from interior/exterior, public/private vantages, breaking free of the walls of the gallery, and entering the awareness of the non-gallery public through a convenient, friendly, delivery system.

- Frederick Ellenberger, April 2002