Sicardi Gallery is proud to announce the opening of Rain: Magdalena Fernández at the Houston Cistern, a video installation of Magdalena Fernandez's 2iPM009 at Houston's historic city reservoir.
Buffalo Bayou Partnership (BBP) and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) will co-present the inaugural art installation in the Buffalo Bayou Park Cistern, a 1926 underground city reservoir that BBP restored, repurposed and opened to the public last spring. The Buffalo Bayou Park Cistern, a structure reminiscent of the ancient Roman cisterns in Istanbul, is a cavernous, 87,500-square-foot-space featuring more than 200 slender, 25-foot high concrete columns. BBP re-discovered the Cistern in 2010 when it was developing the Buffalo Bayou Park project, a 160-acre site west of downtown Houston. Recognizing the historical and architectural significance of the highly unusual space, BBP took a bold step to repurpose the Cistern into a magnificent public area that would house an ambitious program of changing art installations.
2iPM009 is an abstract video-projection that evokes a rainsoaked night. For nearly 20 years, Magdalena Fernández has been using digital media to deconstruct the geometric abstraction of 20th-century masters such as Piet Mondrian. In 2iPM009, Fernández begins with a basic geometric unit that refers to those Mondrian used a century ago in his Composition in Line (1917), from the 1914-15 Pier and Ocean series. She then multiplies that unit through its exponential projection onto the walls of the exhibition space, transforming the initial unit into a rainy night sky through the use of light, sound and movement. The soundtrack is an acoustic montage that Fernández has meticulously edited, of sounds made by members of the a cappella Slovenian choir Pertuum Jazzile, who snap their fingers, slap the palms of their hands against their legs, and stamp their heels on wood to evoke both the drumming and gentle patter of rain. With ingenuity and humor, the artist constructs a language that, though concrete and deeply rooted in Constructivism and its legacy, challenges and transcends those parameters.
For the Buffalo Bayou Park Cistern, Fernández adapted 2iPM009 to project the video onto the columns so that its imagery is reflected in the shallow pool of water on the Cistern floor. The Cistern’s raw interior, modulated by a series of majestic columns, and its 17-second acoustic reverberation time, will make for an immersive art environment.
December 10, 2016 to June 4, 2017
Buffalo Bayou Park Cistern
105 Sabine Street
Houston, Texas 77007
Hours
Wednesday through Friday: 3:30 to 7 PM
Saturdays and Sundays: 10 AM to 7 PM.
Admission
General: $10 per person
Seniors (65+), Students (18+ with ID), Youth (9-17): $8 per person
Please note that children under the age of 9 are not permitted in the Cistern.
Admission is free on Thursdays.
Timed tickets for Rain: Magdalena Fernández at the Houston Cistern can be purchased at buffalobayou.org.
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