**Art in Space: The Sequel. Three Jerome Installation Art Commissions.**
Rollin Marquette, Cynthia Morgan, Gerald Smith/Bernhard Huwiler
Intermedia Arts
Minneapolis, USA
15.05- 22.06.1997 *** "Art in Space: The Sequel" presents a group of energetic and inventive artists who are bringing their visions to this, the second Jerome Installation Art Commissions in 1997. Performative acts and materials set the stage for the installations of Rollin Marquette, Cynthia Morgan and the collaborative team of Gerald Smith and Bernhard Huwiler These artists responded to a call for proposals earlier in the year with a written one page proposal, slides of past work and a budget for the work that is included in this exhibition. We are pleased to have had an opportunity to assist these visionary and committed artists.

**Text:** Suzanne Kosmalski, Program Coordinator *** Conventionally, a line is defined as a path that a point takes freely in its movement through space. In drawing, the point may be at the tip of a pen or a pencil. In the discourses of mathematics and physics, this route between two points can be understood as path independent or path dependent. Path independence is concerned only with the terminus points of such a route. Path dependence takes into account not only the points of terminus, but also information about the journey from point to point. Because performance is central in this work, Huwiler and Smiths "Drawing Visions in Space" is path dependent. For this work the artists, leaving a trail of blue pigmented sand behind them, drew a line that crosses a section of the city through and over streets, yards, and a frozen lake. Smith, holding a long stick with a video camera strung to the end, followed the trail of sand that Huwiler left in his wake.

The artists describe this work as a drawing and an experiment which takes into account such abstract and contingent aspects as duration, distance, location, and their subjective experience. Viewing the videotaped trace of their walk through the urban environment, we become aware of the ways our spaces are marked, regimented, and mutable. We see snow, ice, pavement, a fence, more snow. In describing the work as drawing, the artists also focus on the problem of drawing itself. With this piece, we are made aware of drawing as a cognitive performance that involves both psychological and bodily components. Similar to the way the blue line literally describes, or even indexes, the movements of Huwiler’s body as he treks across the wintry landscape, a drawing marks the movements — both voluntary and involuntary of the hand making the mark.

At Intermedia Arts, a trace of this performance - a video projection of the line being made - is shown on the floor where viewers can move into the image, walking around and on the line as it appears to move across the frame of light. Also in the space, a recording of the artists’ footsteps and the noises of the urban environment plays continuously, connecting the abstract image of the line beautiful and isolated with the action of its making. High up in a corner of the room, filmed fragments of the action are projected onto the wall. This film, like the sounds, is a trace or memory of the action, not a documentation. It is fleeting and fragmentary as in memory and suggests rather than describes the processes of drawing, moving in space, and remembering.

**Text:** Diane Mullin