10.22.2010

Demetrius Oliver (MFA '04) Featured on ArtReview.com for Chelsea Commission


Demetrius Oliver (MFA '04) has been featured on ArtReview.com for his first major public commission and latest in the High Line's series of artist projects, which opened last week. The High Line is an elevated railroad spur running through Chelsea and the West Village which in its recent makeover now has become a wildly successful tourist draw.

In Oliver's "Jupiter", five views of a bedroom were various stages of surrealist transformation – from a relatively straightforward shot of a lunar globe on a chair to images of a telescope and violin cases before darkened windows and furled umbrellas balanced at the edge of a bed – appeared to rotate across a billboard next to and slightly below the High Line in a parking lot at West 18th Street. Like those seen in telescopes, Oliver’s images are traces of the past, events constructed by the artist and reflected off the shiny surface of a convex teapot. Oliver’s installation was timed to run for a full lunar cycle – his five images were meant to suggest the moon in its various phases – and coincided with the fall equinox and the Jupiter opposition on 21 September. As supplemental programming, Friends of the High Line planned a public viewing of the opposition with the New York chapter of the Amateur Astronomers Association; and in response to the artist’s desire to add a musical component to the installation, students from the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music performed John Coltrane’s Jupiter Variation (1967). Oliver's ability to create complex and evocative connections between images and performative media has yet to catch up with his fascination and search for meaning.

To see more of ArtReview's feature, visit http://www.artreview.com/forum/topics/demetrius-oliver-jupiter

To see more of Oliver's work, visit http://demetriusoliver.blogspot.com/

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