Fluttering Stripes
A wall, video tape and a fan are the elements that make up Flaming Tape (2021) Zivinas Kempinas has taken the flat strips of film from the reel to create a sculpture. In is own words: “I am attracted to things that can transcend their own banality and materiality to become something else – something more. I love the way videotape is delicate and durable at the same time – because it’s meant to last – yet it’s disappearing from our lives anyway.”
Kempinas is fascinated by various types of energy : light, the rhythm of geometric a pattern , or a gust of wind. A fan that produces an air current sets the magnetic tape in motion, like a three dimensional drawing that suddenly starts to move. Althouh the video tape is uniformingly black in color, it creates visual effects against the white wall. Light and air currents are phenomena that activate Kempinas’ installations. To emphasize the temporality of the movement, his work balances on the edge of floating and hanging, falling and collapsing.
Zivinas Kempinas and Calder
Calder made three dimensional ‘drawings in space’ with wire – much as if the background of a drawing was cut away with only the lines remaining. The spatial drawings are also brought to life by air currents. In Kempinas’ Flaming Tape, numerous pieces of magnetic video tape have been attached to the wall, rigidly parallel to each other, to form a striped image. Some of the pieces of tape in the middle of the work are not completely stuck to the wall, fluttering in the space whenever the fan is switched on. As soon as it is switched off, these pieces of tape return to their original position in the pattern.Energetic activation, compositional variations of an artwork in the moment of movement, and the concept of a spatial drawing all connect Kempinas to Calder.
Movement and Spatial Lines – text describing Zivinas Kempinas’ work in the superb exposition Calder Now which ran at Kunsthal Rotterdam in spring 2022.
Fluttering Stripes
A wall, video tape and a fan are the elements that make up Flaming Tape (2021) Zivinas Kempinas has taken the flat strips of film from the reel to create a sculpture. In is own words: “I am attracted to things that can transcend their own banality and materiality to become something else – something more. I love the way videotape is delicate and durable at the same time – because it’s meant to last – yet it’s disappearing from our lives anyway.”
Kempinas is fascinated by various types of energy : light, the rhythm of geometric a pattern , or a gust of wind. A fan that produces an air current sets the magnetic tape in motion, like a three dimensional drawing that suddenly starts to move. Althouh the video tape is uniformingly black in color, it creates visual effects against the white wall. Light and air currents are phenomena that activate Kempinas’ installations. To emphasize the temporality of the movement, his work balances on the edge of floating and hanging, falling and collapsing.
Zivinas Kempinas and Calder
Calder made three dimensional ‘drawings in space’ with wire – much as if the background of a drawing was cut away with only the lines remaining. The spatial drawings are also brought to life by air currents. In Kempinas’ Flaming Tape, numerous pieces of magnetic video tape have been attached to the wall, rigidly parallel to each other, to form a striped image. Some of the pieces of tape in the middle of the work are not completely stuck to the wall, fluttering in the space whenever the fan is switched on. As soon as it is switched off, these pieces of tape return to their original position in the pattern.Energetic activation, compositional variations of an artwork in the moment of movement, and the concept of a spatial drawing all connect Kempinas to Calder.
Movement and Spatial Lines – text describing Zivinas Kempinas’ work in the superb exposition Calder Now which ran at Kunsthal Rotterdam in spring 2022.