PORTAL
2015, UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY, UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH, PITTSBURGH, PA
— Isabelle Chartier: Curator of the University Art Gallery
This multi-media installation was conceived by Aaron Henderson, Michael Morrill, and Mathew Rosenblum, three faculty members of the Studio Arts and Music departments at the University of Pittsburgh. Created specifically for the octagonal space of the gallery (also known as the Rotunda), the visual and sonic components connect time and space with the intrinsic qualities of the room, as the natural light coming in from the high ocular windows complement the reverberating sounds filling the room.
Michael Morrill’s paintings refer to the solstices and equinoxes. The separation between gold and blue represents the terminator, the line that separates the illuminated day from the dark night side of a planet. According to the time of day, the natural sunlight strikes the Rotunda walls in shapes that shift from spherical to elliptical, and at various heights depending on the seasons. Aaron Henderson’s digital light composition captures the flow of sunlight, one day for each month and in accelerated motion, thus revealing the movement of the sun and its interaction with the paintings. Filling the space is Mathew Rosenblum’s surround sound piece, subtly bringing in elements captured outside the room, such as birds in the garden or water from the fountain. Segments of organ melodies recall the historical use of the room, originally planned as a music chamber, as testified by the inscription in the stone arch above the door.
All three artists responded together to the specificities of this unique space in the Frick Fine Arts Building, bringing in elements from the outside and reflecting upon them in their own individual way.
The installation opens in 2015, marking the building’s 50th anniversary.
Portal Paintings
The quartet of Portal paintings are abstract representations of the spring and fall Equinox and summer and winter Solstice astronomic events.
The binary palette of ultramarine blue and gold leaf was taken from the reproduction of Simone Martini’s Annunciation, by Russian painter-copyist and restorer Nicholas Lochoff, that is on permanent display in the Cloister of the Frick Fine Arts Building.
On sunny days, torqued ellipses of light project through the portal windows at the top of the Rotunda and travel diagonally downward and over the surfaces of the Rotunda interior. Depending on the hour and time of the year, the sunlight changes paths, in some moments traveling to the floor to create glowing elliptical spots on the iron oxide colored floor tile. With a little patience, the subtle movement of light can be observed, momentarily concentrating a viewer’s awareness of sky and the wonders of celestial movement.
On the summer Solstice, one of several light orbs migrates to the center of the east exhibition wall. This remarkable phenomenon determined the placement of the summer Solstice painting, which in turn situated the other three paintings in rotational order. The Solstice and Equinox paintings are installed symmetrically opposite each other on the four exhibition walls of the octagonal space: visually and spatially implying the seasonal rotation of the earth. The elegant separations of light and dark in the Portal paintings are seen as poetic translations of astronomical events that occur in the physical world, in contrast to an image of piety and the supernatural.
Created specifically for this multi-media installation, the Portal paintings later provided a template for a new body of work titled Blue.
— Michael Morrill