MICKEY is pleased to present “BORN”, an exhibition by Paul Heyer. “BORN” features an immersive light and sound installation that evokes a post-earth or post-body existence. The main gallery has been transformed into an impossible landscape that collides the micro and the macro, evoking both the swirling magnitude of galaxies and the biology of microscopic organisms. Pools of light are arranged on the ground in a pattern of organically undulating lines, a kind of writing on the earth. These bits map out a larger enigmatic whole, much like DNA.
The sound component of “BORN” was made in collaboration with DJ and producer Ariel Zetina. This immersive soundscape culls from ‘90s ambient trance, a moment of utopian hope for transcendence and an eco-minded unity of all beings (including those that might be in space). The narrator, voiced by the artist’s nephew, guides the participant through a liminal space - between life and death, between earth and what comes after, and between human and something else. Heyer wants to stare into that instant of transformation and hold the viewer in that liminal space.
The side gallery contains Heyer’s skeleton paintings. These paintings utilize the lexicon of the main gallery’s installation and its theme of playful transmutation.
In this moment of political and ecological uncertainty, “BORN” explores the question, “What is the outer boundary of life, and what courage must we summon to confront that frontier?”
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