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Void

Dave Gordon & Austin Fowler

Exhibition was on view from August 23rd – September 14th, 2010


Exhibition Description & Artist Statement

“Signals from input sensory organs are how we perceive reality, and thus delineate our understanding of existence,” says David Gordon. “How the brain interprets these signals dictates how we interact with our environments, yet also dictates the consequence an environment can have upon the mind.”

Dave Gordon and Austin Fowler collaborated together to create Void, an installation in Fall 2010 that incorporated simplistic white, physical space and instrumental, digital sound. A cubic box constructed of lumber and white fabric took up the majority of the gallery space, wall to wall and floor to ceiling. Sitting in the center of the gallery, the box was surrounded by a hidden sound system with speakers that were placed intentionally so as to exemplify music reflective of the study of Newton’s Optiks. Viewers were allowed to enter the white space and sit on a stool located within the center of the cube. Inside the space, listening to the sounds surrounding them, viewers were influenced to imagine and experience a sense of “void,” creating images in their heads against the white curtained environment as they listened to the voiceless sound around them.

Gordons artistic interests are inspired by his desire to understand both our mental and physical place in reality. This practice allows him to enhance simplistic visuals and sounds to create new visuals and concepts within the mind of the viewer; these visuals gain meaning through the correlation of the viewers body placement and the physical environment surrounding them. Gordons investigation into this particular installation began with drawings and paintings, along with hours of deep and personal inward thought. Onset studies conducted by his collaborator and fellow artist, Austin Fowler, encompassed Newtons Optiks, a science that eventually allocated the spherical disposition of sound speakers used in the piece. The resulting work of art in this exhibition was a space where Gordon and Fowler precisely manipulated the effects of light and music to create a newly beautiful understanding of the viewers own awareness of reality and unreality, of the infinite and the void.

About the Artists

David Gordon was a senior at Appalachian State University working towards receiving a B.S. in Art Education and a B.F.A. in Studio Art with a concentration in Sculpture. Though ever evolving, Gordons work deals with the conscious and unconscious perception of our reality. Through his work, Gordon seeks to find the core purpose of his existence and what it means to be a living, breathing organism existing at a definitive point in the infinite void of time. Gordon has incorporated his own grapheme-color and visual-auditory synesthesia into his work. This serves to further his understanding of the seemingly limitless mental power of the human imagination and why we exist with it.

Austin Fowler is a sound artist based in Carrboro, NC. Hailing from the rural farm land of Stokes County, his work focuses on man's confrontation with the modern landscape. His works involve a mixture of language and music, in which words become empty signifiers, cut up and sown across the digital field. Material is taken from a variety of sources, creating an audio-montage that simulates a grand range of the sensory experience. Giambattista Vico, Isaac Newton and Franz Schubert rub elbows with German minimalism and club techno. In short, Fowler's work gives one the sense that all works of man lie crippled before the deep void of the cosmos, as refracted through the infinity of the human mind.
- Charles Perry, Dissociative Space Collective

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