What to See: IMOCA - Double Vision and TrA

It's a matter of connection for two artists exhibiting at the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art (IMOCA). It's a matter of bringing the past to current terms.  Viewing the former through the lens of the now and understanding it is never a simple task.  Hulleah J Tsinhnahjinnie, however, has accomplished this in her series, Double Vision, exhibiting at IMOCA from February 1st through March 16th.

Tsinhnahjinnie, a photographer, educator, and curator from the Southwest, makes anew the landscape of the West.  This series takes old arte-de-visites, cabinet cards, stereopticons, and real photo cards and puts a new spin on them.  And having grown up in the Southwest and herself being Navajo, Creek and  Seminole, she gives a certain weight to these recontextualized photos.

The original pictures, small in size, are enlarged and textured.  Tsinhnahjinnie adds colors and commentary to the pieces.  They are created on poly-satin fabric, released from their previous stagnant paper.  The images appear to float throughout the gallery as though timeless and they connect us to places beyond us bringing the heavens - stars, planets, solar systems - close in a tangible way.

Jose Di Gregorio takes the scenes from his experience at a California planetarium and transforms them into celestial circles (or mandalas as he calls them), full of connecting lines.  For him they represent the exceedingly broad eternality of the universe.

Now living in California, Di Gregorio graduated with a BFA from Herron School of Art and Design.  He returned to Indianapolis to showcase his latest work called TrA, standing for Triangulum Australe ("southern triangle" in Latin), a small constellation in the southern hemisphere. The work, ten circles hung in a black room, brings the viewer through a progression.  The first mandala starts off with one line, the following with more lines, the next even with more until coming to the tenth in which the lines hide all visible color.  It first shows how small people are in the scope of the universe leading them to see how they add to the wonder and complexity of it at the end.

Experience both Di Gregorio and Tsinhnahjinnie works hanging now through March 16th at IMOCA, located at The Murphy Arts Center, Fountain Square 1043 Virginia Ave, Indianapolis 46203.