Catalyst Art Gallery

Year

Title

Type

Tools

2022

UCI's Art Department: Painting and Photography

Time-based Media & Projection Mapping

Premiere Pro, Photoshop, & MadMapper

Catalyst Art Gallery is an exhibition produced by the Catalyst collective that provides creative, social, and academic growth for undergraduate peers. I showcased a multichannel video projection installation created in the Projects in New Technology class. Developing technical skills in time-based media and projection mapping in a collaborative project, the piece is an observation of the funding and equipment in UC Irvine's art department as an institution.

Two paintings projected onto art campus building walls with a woman looking.

Video projections of a person painting and photographs projected on to art campus building wall.

Centered view of projection of abstract painting video.

Abstract painting with dynamic swirls and splatters of blue, white, red, and black on a canvas set on a concrete floor.

Abstract painting with brushstrokes in green, yellow, blue, and red colors on a canvas set on a concrete floor.

Abstract painting with intense gestural brushstrokes in black, teal, yellow, and red colors on a canvas placed on the concrete ground.

Project

Process

Inspired by the sentiments and experiences of art students, the piece takes on a research and documentary approach to showcasing an art campus environment. In this collaborative project, my partner expressed her observations in the painting department, while I documented the photography department.

My process included walking around the arts campus and capturing photos of the spaces as is. Influenced by documentary photography, I wanted to capture my research in a candid, edit-less, and straightforward manner. For the painting section, my partner expressed her research and emotions abstractly through gesture, color, and sound. The videos recording our observations were projected onto the respective painting and photography classroom buildings. The goal of the project is for the viewer to observe our research and create their own sentiments about these spaces.

Painting shelp with used paint tubes, water cup, and black fabric scattered around.

UC Irvine painting classroom with wooden stools and gray display table

Two flat paintbrushed stacked on top of each other and a plastic tray of a soap bar on the side.

Two empty automatic paper towel dispensers.

Inclusive bathroom sign and bathroom with shower and equipment.

Bathroom sink with rusted nail in drain.

Disintegrating site map of UC Irvine art campus.

Circular light pink picnic benches in UC Irvine Arts Courtyard with white sheet on the ground.

UC Irvine Arts Campus office with caution tape across door.

White Apple keyboard with buildup on keys.

Los Angeles Times newspaper from Friday, April 4, 1997.

Four Domke camera bags on white wire storage rack.

Stop bath, fixer, and perma wash plastic containers on a wire rack in darkroom.

Dirty and rusted black sink in darkroom.

Rusted stainless steel sink counter with paper towel roll and wooden mini fridge.

Gray square locker decorated with WWF, Greenpeace, Sierra Club, and The Nature Conservatory stickers.

Torn off blue Greenpeace 1992 sticker with a whale tail.

White WWF sticker with a panda and drawn on unicorn horn with black marker

Yellowed sticker with "Hi David" writing and smiley face.

Gray locker decorated with sun damaged stickers of household cleaning supplies.

Materials

The equipment and materials used in the project had a significant role in its context. For the photography section, the video clips and photographs were taken on a 2014 Canon Rebel camera. Due to the undeveloped technology of the camera, it captured shaky video footage and camera fiddling sounds. In the painting section, self-made or scrap canvases and communal paintbrushes were repurposed. When projecting the videos, a long-used painting shelf where students place paints and water cups was utilized to place the projector and laptop that ran MadMapper.

KAYLEE SUN