If it is true that what you see is what you get; then it must also be true that what you see is what you’re given. That makes hyper vivid visualist Mark Diamond something of an all-seeing Santa Claus. With roots that go back to holography’s first museum and decades in the art of 3D, the imagist has stretched the line of sight into imagination’s many dimensions, and given the viewer entirely new ways to look at things. Want proof? Hit Swampspace Gallery this Second Saturday for Diamond’s wonder-pumping “Spatial Recognitions.”
What’s the big idea behind Spatial Recognition? Well the big idea is getting people to rekindle their sense of wonder and awe at how many dimensional the “ordinary” world around them really is.
Rumor has it this goes well beyond a simple 3D art show -- that so? I am not sure what is art in the mind of the next guy, but this show is an open invitation to glimpse into how I see in a very specific and relatively unfamiliar medium that ironically is a hundred years old. I have invested over 4000 hours in the creation of the 3D Wall-o-Gram alone.
What kinda subjects are we talkin’ about here? Well it's chaotically eclectic. You could put me in a closet and I will find something three dimensionally interesting to capture, so I don't need to even leave the house to get drawn in by the wonder of the way objects occupy space. There are portraits of Bo Diddley, R. Buckminster Fuller and Les Paul which I produced with my partner Clayton Munsey. And there are quite a few local artists as well as. I do work for many museums, galleries, collectors and artists themselves, and invariably I try to capture a 3D memento of whatever I’ve been assigned to do in 2D. So you will see many people you recognize in the Wall-o-Gram.
Is it true that walls won’t be the only thing the show intends to go beyond? Well, besides the 3D Wall-o-Gram, I’ve created something I call “Greenspace,” which is a 3’ x 4’ chunk of earth originally created for a Tokyo office building. The cocaine-fueled concrete pour fest that occurred over the last few decades has left very little of the canopy I grew up with here, and Miami is now very close to the bottom of the list when it comes to green spaces. This piece has come to represent the last 12 square feet of nature that Miami will have left in the future. It's a bit of a tip of the hat to the line from Joni Mitchell’s“Big Yellow Taxi”, where she sings about how “they paved paradise and put up a parking lot,” and the piece is meant to be walked upon.
Will 3D spex be required for the full experience? Nope. My specialty is auto-stereoscopic imagery, and it has been for over 30 years, beginning with with holograms. You don't need no stinkin' glasses to have a binocular stereoscopic experience. Never have; never will.
Nevertheless, do you expect those who catch the show to be come away seeing things differently? Absolutely. I have people tell me all the time that merely looking at the work affects them in some profound way. They actually see the world more dimensionally by virtue of having the experience of looking at 3D images. Bingo, I have done my job.
Mark Diamond’s Spatial Recognition opens Saturday September 8 6-11pm at Swampspace Gallery. For more information log on here.
