PARAMUS, N.J. – Gallery Bergen will host a virtual exhibition opening of “An Attempt to Communicate with Reality” featuring an installation by Newark artist Gianluca Bianchino Tuesday, March 30 at 7:00 p.m. on the Gallery Bergen Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/GalleryBergenAtBergenCommunityCollege/ and on the Gallery Bergen YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCu2chPj3CUTMmJgzChS9VPA/featured.
The exhibition conveys the dichotomy between living “in reality” and “virtually” while offering commentary on the immersion of virtual realities and spaces since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Gallery Bergen Director Tim Blunk.
“Bianchino’s work imagines a world of fragile, broken robots conversing with each other about what is real,” he said. “You are there, but not there. Interacting with art, but at a strange distance – like digital shadows on Plato’s laptop. We use digital media to bridge the gap of physical space between us, but it can be awkward, clumsy, unsatisfying, exhausting, or comical – just like every other means of communication. But our human needs and expectations too often exceed the capabilities of our technology.”
Bianchino’s project intends to present the viewer with an immersive experience of light, shadow, form, movement and optics. Bianchino has constructed the wall-based installation in Gallery Bergen at the College’s Paramus campus. The gallery has created a 3D virtual reality model of its space providing viewers the ability to navigate the gallery and approach the artwork from any vantage point they could achieve in the actual location.
“For this particular experiment, I am interested in the added virtual experience as a response to social distancing,” the artist said.
Known for his 3D works that make use of video, sound sculpture and projection that reference “space junk” now orbiting the planet, Bianchino’s works appear to inhabit their spaces as objects gently floating or emerging from walls, fragile articulated legs sometimes broken or bent, parabolic umbrellas inclined towards each other as if in melancholy communication, Blunk said.
For more information, visit https://gallerybergen.art.
Based in Paramus, Bergen Community College (www.bergen.edu), a public two-year coeducational college, enrolls more than 13,000 students at locations in Paramus, the Philip Ciarco Jr. Learning Center in Hackensack and Bergen Community College at the Meadowlands in Lyndhurst. The College offers associate degree, certificate and continuing education programs in a variety of fields. More students graduate from Bergen than any other community college in the state.
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