Art Installation Series: Wold Atrium Exhibition

Slippery Slope by Georgie Friedman

January – November 2016

Georgie Friedman, Slippery Slope, 2016, two-channel site-specific video installation, 30 feet 7 inches x 4 feet, 6:40 min (loop, no audio), Wold Center, Union College

Embracing the Peter Irving Wold Center as an area of shared ideas and interdisciplinary learning, the Mandeville Gallery presents a new artwork by Georgie Friedman as part of the ongoing Art Installation Series.
Based on the highly successful Art Installation Series currently on display in the Schaffer Library, artist Georgie Friedman was invited to create a site-specific video installation piece exclusively for the atrium area of the Peter Irving Wold Center. She will be installing her work Monday, January 4, through Thursday, January 7, 2016, from 9am to 5pm. Students, faculty, staff and the public will be able to view the artist at work, informally interact, and observe the creative process in real time. The project culminates in an artist talk on Friday, January 8th, and the artwork will remain on display through November 2016.

Slippery Slope

To view a short video of the installation click here.

Interdisciplinary artist Georgie Friedman is interested in our psychological and societal relationships to mild and severe natural phenomena. Her research and projects are based on a range of powerful atmospheric and oceanic conditions including, hurricanes, lighting storms, icebergs, glacial melt, whirlpools and tsunamis. Friedman’s pieces focus on the power of natural elements in relation to human fragility.

Friedman digitally reframes the natural elements by projecting footage onto existing architecture or sculptural forms in ways that transform the elements’ visual properties, scale or positioning. She works to manipulate the physics of light, bending and distorting the imagery to create a range of representation and abstraction within each installation in order to create new experiences for viewers. Her goal is to draw attention to our relationships to interior/exterior spaces by altering our typical perceptions of landscape and the architectural features that are built to “shield” us.

In Slippery Slope, Friedman merges waterfall footage, filmed locally, and the architecture of the Peter Irving Wold Center, with the intent of highlighting our natural, built, and digital environments.

She selected the underside of Wold’s third floor staircase as the site for this installation, responding to its angles, length, and slide-like quality. While researching the area around Union College, Friedman chose to film in the Plotter Kill Preserve because of its steep waterfalls and the gorge’s ancient geological history: ”The gorge was cut by melt waters at the close of the ice ages about 10,000 years ago.”1 Friedman paired the prehistoric natural ledges and stream with the modern construction of the stairs, allowing their forms to echo each other.

With the intention of pushing this pairing, and the non-literal representation of the waterfall, to a more psychological or philosophical space, Friedman’s usage of the title, Slippery Slope, asks viewers to consider: the possible dangers and/or rewards involved in navigating natural (or interpersonal) terrains; our responsibility to protect our natural environments to ensure they are not usurped by urban/industrial development or climate shifts; and what if in the future, our only knowledge/experience of “landscape” or “nature” is through digital representations?

Co-sponsorship is provided by The President’s Commission on the Status of Women, Africana Studies Program, Gender, Sexuality & Women’s Studies Program, Interdisciplinary Studies and the Visual Arts Department.

Georgie Friedman earned her M.F.A. from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in conjunction with Tufts University, and a B.A. from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is based in Boston but has lived, worked and exhibited throughout the United States. Her speaking engagements and exhibitions include museums, universities, galleries, film screenings and public art installations. In 2013 she was awarded a Sculpture/Installation Artist Fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Friedman’s recent commissions include five public media art installations for Art on the Marquee through the Boston Cyberarts/Massachusetts Convention Center Authority (2012-2015) and a temporary Public Art commission for two video installations for the Boston Harbor Island Pavilion on the Rose Kennedy Greenway (2012).

Recent exhibitions include: Under the Icy Sky, two site-specific, outdoor video installations, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts (2015); Into the Wind, Foster Gallery, Dedham, Massachusetts (2014); Waves & Currents, Transylvania University, Lexington, Kentucky (2013); Moving Image Arts, The Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, California (2012); Ripple Effect, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts (2011-2012); and the 2010 deCordova Biennial, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts (2010).

Friedman’s work has been featured in The Boston Globe, The New York Times, NPR, The Atlantic, Flash Art, Orion Magazine, among many others. She teaches video art, installation and time-based art classes in the Fine Arts Department at Boston College and Massachusetts College of Art and Design.