(PARAMUS, NJ) — Bergen Community College’s Gallery Bergen announces its fall exhibit PULSE: Resonating Earth featuring an installation by Poramit Thantapalit with art by Art of Motion Dance Theater and music by Carolyn Enger. The exhibition runs from September 22 to December 8, 2022. Curated by Tim Blunk of Gallery Bergen.
In late 2022, Gallery Bergen will be transformed into a water installation by Thai artist Poramit Thantapalit. His character is trash – like found plastic bottles, plastic bags, and other trash that might be found in the Hackensack River, a landfill, or the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Instead, Poramit breathes life into these materials, creating luminous sculptures that shine and strike from the ceiling and walls. They make the viewer forget where they came from in their newly assembled forms.
There is a type called eco-art, or “garbage art,” but this is something different. “Jackson Pollock painted with house paint, but he wasn’t a house painter,” says Gallery Bergen director and curator Tim Blunk. “Poramit’s artistic hand and his understanding of turning quantity into character create a work that transcends its material.”
PULSE: Resonating Earth will feature several performances, including a scheduled opening gala on September 22 and closing on December 8. Both will include dance performances by BCC group member Lynn Needle and Art of Motion Dance Theater and Steinway pianist Carolyn. Enger. The opening will include pieces from Needle’s work, The Poseidon Project – An Aquatic Myth – a suite with live music and dance, including narrated pieces, each connecting to aquatic myths, legends, and creatures.
Acclaimed pianist Carolyn Enger will play episodes of her improvised video program, Resonating Earth. From the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to the coal-fired plants in Germany’s Ruhr Valley, from the highlands of Alaska to the mountains of potassium waste in Eastern Germany, Resonating Earth has been created in response to the climate crisis. With a wide range of music, including Bach, Debussy, Philip Glass, among others, and stunning environmental images by Peabody Award-winning producer Elliott Forrest (WQXR), artist Myles Aronowitz, and environmental activist and photographer J. Henry Fair, Resonating Earth creates a visual environment. the beauty of nature, and encourages environmental activism in an artistic, musical way. The program wants to transport the audience to a quiet, meditative place, allowing them to decompress from their daily lives, inviting them to think about the place of people on earth, and encouraging action to protect our beautiful, fragile world.
