BRATTLEBORO — Artist Natalja Kent's newest exhibition, Movement Artifact, opens at Epsilon Spires on Friday, Sept. 6, during Brattleboro's Gallery Walk.
Along with a multimedia production by artist Victoria Keddie, Movement Artifact helps mark the grand opening of the performance and events space located at the First Baptist Church on Main Street.
In her latest body of work, Natalja Kent upturns the conventions of photography by removing the camera altogether. According to a news release, “these sensuous, large color fields are inhabited by dynamic geometric abstractions that seem suspended mid-motion. Angular bands of brightness and shadow clash and gather with a dynamism suggestive of an animating force that remains just out of sight. That generative motion is the artist herself, who produces these images by the direct application of light to the paper in the darkroom.”
To create the works, Kent uses flashlights and colored gels to build the images cumulatively with beams of light that activate the silver halide crystals to produce jewel-deep colors on the paper.
For this series the artist brought her mindfulness practice into the studio by beginning work on each piece with a body scan meditation.
Kent is based in Los Angeles. Dedicated to collaboration and feminist social practice, she has worked in groups such as the Los Angeles Women's Center for Creative Work, Assume Vivid Astro Focus, The Dirt Palace, and The Good Good. She has exhibited and performed at Tate Liverpool, The Carpenter Center for The Visual Arts at Harvard, Hiromi Yoshi Gallery, and MOMA PS1.
Epsilon Spires is charged with managing the performance and event spaces being re-purposed at 190 Main St.