Giants Art from the Dean Collection at Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (II)

Neon, marble, and glowing resin traded back and forth through the glass of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Giants Art from the Dean Collection at Virginia Museum of Fine Arts / 35mm color negative (stock unidentified) / Giants Art from the Dean Collection at Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (II) — Giants Art from the Dean Collection at Virginia Museum of Fine Arts collection, 35mm film archive

This roll keeps getting caught in the glass. It opens with a face drawn in orange, yellow, and teal neon, shot through a window that folds bare trees and the museum grounds into the artwork itself, and it closes the same way — the word blood in pale green tube light hovering over the brick facade and chimneys reflected behind it. Inside and outside refuse to stay on their own sides of the pane, which feels right for an exhibition built on collecting boldly.

Between those two neon bookends, the building takes over. A rainbow-striped banner hangs in a dark gallery under a diagonal blade of skylight; a warm stone atrium lines up its columns toward a glowing doorway, a single dark vessel enthroned in a lit niche overhead; a switchback staircase folds itself against a wall of afternoon glass. Even the pitted skin of a column gets a frame to itself, close enough to read like a lunar surface.

The color negative saves its loudest note for a pair of studies of a translucent red sculpture on its pedestal — a block of lit ruby that soaks the plinth beneath it in rose light against a pale blue wall. On 35mm film the whole sequence hums at low light: grain in the shadows, warmth in the marble, and neon that seems to float free of anything solid.

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Related

Virginia / Art / Stairs / Neon Lights / Buildings

  • Cemetery - A single fall afternoon among old walled stones and white marble rows in Alexandria, Virginia, on 35mm color negative.
  • Fall Leaves - Three color-negative frames of leaf-covered ground and thinning trees along a Belmont Bay path in Woodbridge, Virginia.
  • Kodak 200 at Belmont Bay - Golden-hour shoreline frames from Woodbridge, Virginia, where a goose family holds the bank.
  • Loosies - Orphan frames from the Virginia waterfront, where fog, flowers, and camouflaged moths all practice the art of disappearing.
  • Same Shots, Two Film Stocks - One evening at Belmont Bay, photographed twice — matching frames from two different color negative rolls.
  • Snowfall - Five color negative frames from a Woodbridge, Virginia snow that arrived before the garden agreed to winter.
  • Giants Art from the Dean Collection at Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (I) - A color-negative walk through the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, from Dean Collection galleries to painted stone.
  • RVA Day Trip - A short color-negative walk through Richmond, Virginia, from new glass to painted brick to late-sixties chrome.

Images

A neon artwork of a face in orange, yellow, and teal tubing seen through a window reflecting bare trees and museum grounds.
A face in tube light, wearing the winter trees outside like a second skin. The window can't decide which picture it wants to be.
A rainbow-striped banner hangs in a dark gallery beneath a diagonal band of lit skylight panels.
A stripe of spectrum caught in a blade of skylight. The dark does most of the composing here.
A warm marble hall with tall columns, a dark vessel displayed in a lit alcove above, and a bright doorway at the far end.
Columns queue up toward the light, and one dark vessel gets the throne seat above the door.
A switchback staircase with metal and wood railings stands against a tall glass wall filled with warm daylight.
The staircase folds itself twice against the glass, as if practicing for the sculpture galleries.
A close view of a pale, pitted stone surface with crumbling texture, beside a dark blurred doorway.
Up close, the architecture has craters. A wall doing a quiet impression of the moon.
The base of a translucent red sculpture glows on a lit pedestal, with swirling internal reflections.
A block of lit ruby, all weather on the inside. The pedestal wears its glow like spilled light.
A tapering translucent pink-red sculpture stands on a pedestal, casting a rose-colored glow against a pale blue wall.
The same red giant from a step back, pouring rose light onto its plinth like it can't help itself.
The word 'blood' in pale green neon letters overlays the reflection of a brick building with chimneys and windows.
One word in cool green tube light, floating over borrowed brick. The street outside signs its name to the work.