City of Light
Tonight marks the final solo exhibit in “Engineers of Illumination,” a light based project by the Optic Flare collective to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the 1915 World’s Fair. In “Field of Vision: Landscapes from the Imagination,” projected-light artist Elise Baldwin draws on old survey maps and landscape photographs that chronicle the devastation of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake, as well as glorious panoramas that captured the city’s phoenix-like rebirth leading up to the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. Viewed after nightfall through backlit picture windows, Baldwin’s eerie sedimentary negatives are reminiscent of X-rays showing a crumbling, broken body miraculously restored to health. Like much of Baldwin’s cinematic work, which has garnered recognition as far as afield as the Czech Republic, these landscapes play with history, communal memory, and the intersection between technology and forces of nature. Her moody gallery is visible every night until midnight over the next six week when works from all five “engineers” will be reprised for a closing group show.
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