Artist – Lana Z Caplan

Gallery NAGA
67 Newbury Street
Boston 02116
United States

T: (1) 617.267.9060
E: mail@gallerynaga.com
W: www.gallerynaga.com

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Caplan’s work uses lush color, rhythmic montage and layers of mesmerizing imagery. Her experimental videos create a perceptual experience that transforms the representational.

The four-part series HedonHeathen, offers an allegorical montage of images of the natural world, highlighting the cultural impact of our changing climate. The series begins with HedonHeathen 1: the palm trees radiating heat and rainforests burning, juxtaposed with a sensuous swimmer in the coral reefs of blue Caribbean waters, conjure a troubled natural world. Along with the transcendent and often psychedelic beauty of the images, an ominous and conflicting under current to the pieces is shaped by both the sound (the sometimes sharp or alarm-like ringing rubbing against melodies and sounds of pleasure) and the collision of incongruous forms in the landscape.

play and repeat is a technological rendering of a cityscape and the experience therein. A sequence of altered still images shot in New York is repeated, each time manipulated and layered over the artifacts of the previous sequence. Images of concrete and pavement are digitally smeared, transmogrifying the architectural structure of the street. Billboards and graffiti become the passage of color and texture through the 2-dimensional space of the screen. play and repeat takes both the city and digital video itself as subject and explores the effect of the addition and removal of the representational image on perception and memory. Composition, color and movement give way to accumulation and eventual disintegration into its own ephemerality.

Caplan’s collaborator Max Jeffers composed the sound for both works.