JAKE LEE-HIGH - Rain Field - (Main Gallery) JOAN PERLMAN - From Ice - (Lower Level) Exhibition Dates: November 15 - December 20, 2008 Opening Reception: Saturday, November 15, from 6-9 PM Rain Field by Jake Lee-High is an interactive sound, olfactory, and light installation that generates weather systems within a 12-foot by 12-foot area in relation to the movement of the observer. Through 117 separate audio channels, the piece explores sound as a visual and architectural medium that evokes a visual response to sonic stimuli as well as defining volumetric space through acoustics. When visitors open the door and step into the darkness of the gallery, their pupils recalibrate as they inhale the moisture-thickened air and are struck by the smell of wet soil. In the near distance the slight pitter-pattering of raindrops can be heard. Walking closer to the sounds seems to awaken a storm. They near a large black square that sits alone in the center of the gallery floor, four lights overhead appear to shift with the moonlight and the passing of clouds. The observers step onto the square and simultaneously into the rain, only the rain never falls on them. A slight wind brushes past their skin carrying the scents of summer, participants are no longer simply standing in the gallery, and they find themselves inhabiting their memories. Jake Lee-High creates installations that investigate the visual language through non-visual stimulation. Auditory, aromatic, and somatic suggestions direct the observer to visualize the environments he depicts through the subconscious collaging of separately evoked memories. Jake Lee-High received his Masters in Fine Art from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. His work been shown throughout the United States and has been recognized in publications, such as Artillery Magazine, the Boston Globe, and the Los Angeles Times. This is his second solo show at Fringe. www.jakeleehigh.com From Ice is a three channel projected video installation by Joan Perlman, with sound composed by Steven Dye. Using immersive imagery and sound, the work is a graphic representation of Iceland's glacial waters - their surfaces and light impacted by weather, location and time. Long interested in the metamorphic and metaphysical aspects of landscape and geology, Perlman's paintings and video work eschew documentation, moving beyond realism and transcending metaphor to tackle nature at its most elemental. The artist's decade-long focus on Iceland's landscape has lent her work unexpected implications. Through frequent visits, the artist has observed the effects of receding glaciers and changing river patterns. The mutability of the landscape has taken on a sense of fragility and loss; her work resonates with a deeply felt sense of place. A selection of paintings on duralar from a series inspired by the glacial rivers will also be on view in the gallery. They explore moments of energy and color, using a multilayered painting process to create surfaces of transparency, texture and light. Joan Perlman is a visual artist who lives and works in Los Angeles. She has shown widely in the US, most recently in exhibitions at Wave Hill, New York, David Cunningham Projects, San Francisco, Jancar Gallery, Los Angeles and the Hafnarborg Institute of Culture and Fine Art, Iceland. Her awards include an individual fellowship from the NEA, a completion grant from the Durfee Foundation, and numerous residencies at the Ucross Foundation, Santa Fe Art Institute and Reykjavik Art Museum/SÍM. Her work is in numerous public and private collections. She earned her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. For more information visit www.joanperlman.com From Ice was funded with support from the Durfee Foundation and the American Embassy in Reykjavik, Iceland. An exhibition catalogue from Perlman's recent solo exhibition at Hafnarborg in Iceland, with contributions by Lawrence Rinder, Brad Leithauser and Anne Brydon, will be available at Fringe. Steven Dye is a musician, sound and film artist whose work actively explores the formal and social qualities of the materials he is using, in particular the boundaries between sound, image, and live performance. His practice includes installation, instrument building, solo and collaborative musical composition, field recording, animated filmmaking, and performative cinema. As a founding member of the Film Performance group Wet Gate, Steve has performed and presented his work in such venues as the Liquid Architecture Sound Arts Festival, Melbourne; the Rotterdam International Film Festival, Rotterdam; the SOUNDplay Festival, Toronto, Media Archeology: Live Cinema at the Aurora Picture Show, Houston and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.