THE LUMINARY CENTER FOR THE ARTS PRESENTS

(dis)Mantle, an Installation by Jill Downen

September 25, 2010 – October 30, 2010

Read the Art in America review here.

The Luminary Center for the Arts is pleased to present a temporary site-specific installation by Jill Downen. (dis)Mantle responds to The Luminary’s Installation Space, a former chapel with vibrant natural light and arched 20’ ceiling. Downen, a 2010 Guggenheim Fellow, will transform the volume of the chapel into a quiet spatial experience through a re-shaping of the architectural contours. A single plumb line hung in the center of the room offers a poetic and moving mediation on the symbiotic relationship between architecture and the human body.

Architecture functions as a kind of exoskeleton—an additional skin beyond our bodies. Our connection to space and objects is defined foremost by our own senses, movement and scale—a defined proportion or human scale. Jill Downen’s installation focuses and heightens this experience by allowing one person to enter at a time into a room subtly changed, leaving one body in one space to encounter new connections between the two.

(dis)Mantle is composed primarily of construction materials, seamlessly blending the artist’s work with the space’s natural construct. As seen in previous exhibitions at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and the Bruno David Gallery, Downen’s organic and sensual installations are spare but overflowing with an exchange between the body, architecture and experience.