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Ricci Albenda
Interior Landscape, Full Spectrum (2009)
Acrylic on aluminum panels
Approximately 21 feet by 131 feet
Located in Main Concourse, SW Concessions
Ricci Albenda's Interior Landscape, Full Spectrum (2009) takes
visitors in two directions: back in time to pre-Renaissance
Europe, where painting and architecture were intimately related,
and into the future, where painting and architecture are again
integrated, but this time in the virtual world of digital information.
Albenda's visually tricky installation plays up the confusion
between two-dimensional illusions and three-dimensional space
to make visitors aware of our surroundings and alert us to art's
power to change them.
The New York artist begins with the architecture on which his
130-foot-long painting - or series of oddly shaped paintings -
rests: the gently curved wall that wraps around the field and
follows the graceful oval shape of the stadium. Albenda breaks
the smooth continuity of the wall into a fractured funhouse of
color, affixing nearly two dozen aluminum panels to it. Each panel
has four sides but none is square, or even rectangular. No two
are the same shape, nor does a right angle appear to define
any of their corners, which tend toward extremes. As for their
colors, no two are the same. Although they cover the spectrum,
Albenda has replaced the natural violet, red, and yellow of the
rainbow with such tints as lavender, coral, and ochre.
Arranged side-by-side in an eccentric row, Albenda's beautifully
painted panels appear to recede and protrude, as if pulsating
like a peculiar, geometric heartbeat. The two-dimensional space
of painting and the three-dimensional space of architecture are
no longer separate. They come together to trick the eye and
delight the mind.
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