Montclair Art Museum Presents New Direction Exhibition on Outdoor Video Monitors

MONTCLAIR, N.J. - March 8, 2016 - PRLog -- Beginning February 7, 2016, the Montclair Art Museum (MAM) will present Noah Klersfeld’s recent series of videos Party in the Bathroom on MAM’s outdoor video monitors. Running from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. the outdoor video monitors present digital art to the public beyond the Museum’s gallery hours and add to the variety of artwork on view on MAM’s grounds. Party in the Bathroom will be on view through May 22, 2016.

Noah Klersfeld is a New York-based video artist, as well as a practicing architect. His recent series of videos Party in the Bathroom transforms mundane bathroom floor tiles into spectacles of lights, patterns, rhythms, and colors. Here, five different videos are played sequentially on each monitor, which are synchronized. The artist filmed these works in the bathrooms of friends, colleagues, bars, restaurants, and hotels. As he flicks the overhead lights on and off, the colors in the tile floors appear to transform, yet their varying patterns and hues are actually the result of changing levels of light and shade, enhanced by a meticulous digital cutting and layering technique. The resulting abstract compositions exploit the formal potential of digital video, and make a tongue-in-cheek reference to the history of abstract painting. Additionally, the artist explains, these works offer a lighthearted acknowledgement of “the bathroom as an unexplored space of psychological and emotional complexity,” pointing to the many different activities—and states of mind—that take place in the bathroom.

Klersfeld earned his BFA and BARCH from the Rhode Island School of Design and attended The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.  He is currently a resident artist at The Elizabeth Foundation for The Arts and has had solo exhibitions at The Hunterdon Art Museum (NJ), The Islip Art Museum (NY), Mixed Greens Gallery (NY), Freight + Volume Gallery (NY), and The Soap Factory (MN).

This exhibition is also part of MAM’s New Directions series, the centerpiece of the Musuem’s contemporary art program. New Directions was founded in 2011 to engage the community with new work that is at once accessible and thought provoking. The next New Directions exhibition will feature Dannielle Tegeder and open on MAM’s outdoor video monitors and Laurie Art Stairway on June 4.