Christine Sciulli at Smack Mellon
Christine Sciulli's new solo exhibit ROIL opens this Saturday, January 9th, 5-8 pm, at Smack Mellon. Sciulli, who participated in BFP Creative's July 2015 show Luminary, has created "an immersive experience that transforms Smack Mellon's gallery space to reflect its historic function as a boiler house that created steam heat and energy for nearby buildings in the early 1900's. A multi channel video influenced by the generation of pressurized steam is projected onto sculptural fabric masses" (from the artist's release for the show).
Christine Sciulli
ROIL
Smack Mellon smackmellon.org
92 Plymouth St, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Artists' Reception: Saturday, January 9, 5-8pm
*Special performance by Bohdan Hilash at 7pm
Exhibition Dates: January 9 - February 21, 2016
Also opening January 9th: Nona Faustine's White Shoes
Christine Sciulli
ROIL
- information from the artist, presented by Smack Mellon
“My most recent explorations have focused on the projection of plane geometries through various three dimensional networks to generate a dynamic mapping of solid geometries of light through space. In this installation, projected circles of white light expand and collapse through Smack Mellon’s cavernous space in a frenzy, which harkens back to the roiling steam that powered surrounding factories.
Smack Mellon’s current home once belonged to Robert Gair, who patented his revolutionary design for a structurally sound three-dimensional lidded box folded from a single two-dimensional sheet of paper without adhesives in 1900. Industrialist Gair housed his widely varied paper product operations in several buildings concentrated in DUMBO. “Gairville” was fueled by tons of coal dropped through chutes carved out of the 4th and 5th floors of this former mill. Boilers in this vast hall superheated, churned and compressed water into hissing steam that pulsed through pipes and coursed into adjacent buildings supplying heat and energy. Racing progress and rapidly expanding industrialization, made possible by the relatively simple kinetic expansion of water into a vapor that could provide so many uses, was the starting point for my immersive, site-specific installation, “ROIL.” My installation stretches through the industrial hall offering opportunities to inhabit it’s passages, caves, nooks, hubs and low overhangs which become clear to the viewer as dark adaptation takes place.”
Christine Sciulli is a visual artist whose primary medium is projected light. Sciulli was selected for the American Academy of Arts and Letters 2014 Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts. Her installations have been shown in the Parrish Art Museum, South Fork Museum of Natural History, Frederieke Taylor Gallery, Edward Hopper House Art Center, and the Islip Art Museum where Janet Goleas described her installation to be “a quiet riot of controlled chaos.”Sciulli holds an Architectural Engineering degree from Penn State University, graduating as a Besal Scholar, as well as BFA and MFA degrees in Combined Media from Hunter College, where she was awarded the Esther Fish Perry Award, BFA merit award, and the Leutz/Reidel Travel Grant. Sciulli’s work is part of the New Museum’s Rhizome ArtBase (Rhizome.org). She is on the Artist Council of the Church Street School of Music and Art and has been adjunct faculty in the MFA Lighting Program at Parsons the New School for Design. In addition to her show at Smack Mellon, in 2016 Sciulli will present work at the Berkshire’s LABspace and will represent the United States at the 2016 Wadden Tide Festival in Denmark.