FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE THROUGH JUNE 3, 2006

SABRINA RAAF - “rift - -> ad-rift”
DATE: April 28 - June 3, 2006
Artists’ Reception: Friday, April 28th, 6-9pm

TIME: Tuesday - Saturday, 11 - 6

CONTACT:
Wendy Cooper wendy @ wendycoopergallery.com
John McKinnon john @ wendycoopergallery.com
312.455.1195

Coming to the Wendy Cooper Gallery this month is the ever innovative, techno savvy, new media artist Sabrina Raaf. In a show titled rift -> ad-rift, Chicago-based Raaf will exhibit recent photographs, as well as mechanical and robotic installations. These works evoke a powerful sense of displacement derived from Raaf’s interest in anti-gravitational motion and experimentation with audience perception of real time and space / not real time and space.

In Raaf’s “Test People Series”, large vertical and panoramic photographs conjure a future place where humans defy gravity and float freely in their surroundings. Both gracefully and awkwardly, their bodies move through the air, creating visual tensions via their unexpected architectural orientations in a world of life without gravity - ad-rift. Although the production processes involved in the creation of these images are significant, they instinctually buoy the viewer into visions of drifting into a euphoric yet anxiety-bound future.

Raaf describes “Icelandic Rift” as “a vision of island industry and organic growth in less-than-earth gravity environment”. The series consists of four mechanical sculptures that resist the rules of gravity through the use of materials such as Ferrofluid (liquid magnet). Coursing through the reservoirs of the aluminum islands, the liquid at times spikes up and pulses in startling clarity and gives an organic tendency to this inorganic substance.

In the Project Room, Raaf will exhibit the robotic installation “Grower”. The mechanical rover hugs the room’s walls and responds to the carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the air by actually drawing varying heights of ’grass‘ on the walls in green ink. As more people enter the room, more CO2 is released into the air, and subsequently the green lines are drawn higher. Once a line is drawn, the rover inches forward and repeats the process until a border of green grass lines the base of the exhibition space. The work is a statement on the necessity of the art audience to facilitate the growth of the art / artmaking. Many bodies are invited to visit the gallery during the month to create a lush environment in the Project Space.

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