Peter Bogers video-art creates a
connection with viewers
By
Kurt Shaw
TRIBUNE-REVIEW ART CRITIC
Friday, September 13, 2002
(excerpt)
...Also featuring the artist submerged in water, the piece is
titled "Play-Rev-Play" (1999), because,
Bogers says, "It refers to the technique - how it is made."
An installation, the piece comprises three large semi-transparent
screens that Bogers has strategically hung in the 30- by 60-foot gallery. On
the screens are projected partial images of himself - in particular his head,
a hand and a foot - videotaped while submerged in water.
Not knowing whether he is drowning, hiding or shutting out the world, the
viewer is surprised when - all at once - the body breaks the surface of the
water.
"The person comes up, then the video is frozen and played backwards in
reverse slowly and the sound goes along with it," Bogers says.
Hovering at the edge of abstraction, the suspended video images have a
fragile, vulnerable aspect. Over time, they persist like an obsession, or a
healing wound, where periods of relative calm are suddenly disrupted.
In Bogers' work, video projection is no longer simply a mode of
representation. He has transformed it into a fluid and synthetic medium that
transports the viewer to a place between time and space where reality is
slowed and examined.
The exhibition is a remarkable debut for an artist who, no doubt, will not
go unnoticed.
· ·
Through
Oct. 19. Hours: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays and Wednesdays; 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursdays
through Saturdays.
· ·
Wood
Street Galleries, 601 Wood St. (above the Wood Street "T" Station),
Downtown.