CULTURAL DELIGHTS – IN DELAWARE?

21Jan08

Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts • 200 South Madison Street, Wilmington, DE 19801
•302.656.6466 • www.thedcca.org
For immediate release Aug. 17, 2006
Contact: Larry Nagengast, 302.656.6466 or 302.373.5254
lmnagengast@thedcca.org
(NOTE: The exhibition title is LightShowers, one word, upper case L and S, with Light in
italics.)
Light, water to delight and relax visitors to DCCA
“LightShowers” mixed-media installation to open Sept. 21
WILMINGTON, Del. — Visitors to the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts
will be able to explore the physical and temporal dimensions of both light and
water in a single mixed-media installation, LightShowers, opening Sept. 21.
LightShowers, designed by architects Yoshiko Sato and Michael Morris of the
Morris Sato Studio in New York City, is a traveling installation created specifically
for the DCCA. Morris and Sato are creating a platform with seating for seven
visitors that will be placed in the center of the museum’s DuPont I gallery. From
their seats, visitors will experience video projections of water on to the
horizontal platform/floor and activate a matrix of light-emitting diodes (LEDs)
pulsing around them in an interval matching a human being’s breath while
resting.
Morris and Sato, with collaboration by Paul Ryan on the installation’s video
images, believe they have created an exhibition that is both exhilarating and
relaxing. “Our use of light and water is intended to be both refreshing and
renewing, magical and wondrous,” Morris says. “For us, viewing, or sitting, is not
a passive condition, but a spatial state of repose, calming the human pulse,
allowing the mind to empty, an aspiration to conjure nothing.”
“This site-specific environment promises to be an interesting experiment in
biofeedback and mood modification,” says DCCA curator J. Susan Isaacs, who
arranged the exhibition.
LightShowers will be on exhibition at the DCCA through January 7, 2007. The
exhibition runs concurrently with The Modern Seat: Selections from the Rymer
Stakgold Museum, which will feature 25 chairs designed from the 1930s
through the 1990s and assembled in a collection by Wilmington residents
Jeanne S. Rymer, a retired professor of interior design at the University of
Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts • 200 South Madison Street, Wilmington, DE 19801
•302.656.6466 • www.thedcca.org
Delaware, and Ivar Stakgold. “It’s nice to be able to reinforce a theme through
concurrent exhibitions like these,” Isaacs says.
LightShowers is supported in part by the DuPont Co. Corian® Solid Surfaces and
Mitchell Associates, with additional support from Wilmington architect Joe
Carbonell and Lynn and Rodney Sharp.
Yoshiko Sato and Michael Morris have been partners in the multidisciplinary
architecture practice Morris Sato Studio in New York City since 1996. Widely
recognized for their architecture, design, and public art collaborations, they
have built and exhibited projects in North America, Europe, and Japan. Sato
teaches at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Morris at
Parsons School of Design. For further information about the architects, visit
www.morrissato.com
Paul Ryan’s video art work has been presented in Japan, Turkey, France,
Germany, Holland, Spain, and Ecuador and in museums throughout the United
States, including The Museum of Modern Art and The Whitney Museum of
American Art. Ryan is core faculty in Graduate Media Studies at The New
School in New York City.
The DCCA, a non-collecting art museum founded in 1979, presents more than
30 exhibitions annually of regionally, nationally and internationally recognized
artists that explore topical issues in contemporary art and society, as well as
symposia, lectures and tours. The DCCA provides individual studios to more
than 25 artists, who also exhibit regularly within its galleries and throughout the
region. The DCCA has a variety of educational and outreach programs, including
one that integrates contemporary arts into the public school curriculum, and
artists’ residencies that feature collaboration with underserved community
groups. The center is housed in a renovated industrial building at 200 South
Madison St. in the heart of the rejuvenated Wilmington Riverfront.
DCCA gallery hours are 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday
and noon-5 p.m. Wednesday and Sunday. Admission is $5 adults, $3 for
students and senior citizens (age 65 and up), with children under 12 admitted
free. Admission is pay as you like on Wednesday and free until 1 p.m. Saturday.
The DCCA is wheelchair-accessible; visitors with special needs are urged to call
in advance. DCCA exhibitions and programs are made possible, in part, through
private contributions, members’ support, and major grants from the National
Endowment for the Arts and the Delaware Division of the Arts.

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