Simple Magic | Andrew Fansler
One of the guiding principles of art production at Elsewhere is to respect the museum as a closed system—meaning that artists are invited to work only with materials at hand, and primarily within the context of the building. Thus, the museum can feel like a world unto itself, an inward facing hive of activity that stands apart from and sometimes in opposition to the outside world. Through the installation of a camera obscura, Andrew Fansler challenges the established boundaries between inside and out. The building itself is used as an instrument to draw the outside world in. Visitors sit on a stage positioned under a skylight on the 3rd floor, drawing a heavy curtain around themselves to create a dark chamber where moving images of the sky overhead are projected onto the ground. Shuttered from the visual noise and activity of the rest of the museum, the chamber is a contemplative sanctuary for meditating on fleeting images of cloud forms that appear as wondrous apparitions through simple sleight of hand, like a bit of magic.
