INSTANT - Brian Patrick Franklin's Artist Reception

The McLean County Arts Center presents INSTANT, an exhibition of video and digital artwork about the spectacle and anticipation of sports by Brian Patrick Franklin, from January 10 - February 15, 2014. An Artist Reception for the exhibition will be on Friday, January 17 from 5pm to 7pm in the Brandt Gallery. Brian Patrick Franklin will also be giving an Art Talk on Tuesday, February 11 at 6pm. Both events are free and open to the public.

The exhibition INSTANT explores the visual wonder hidden within sports by manipulating time and movement. The artist Brian Patrick Franklin reflects on the inherent visual information in a sports event or competition and our emotional reactions as spectators. Two bodies of work are presented in the gallery; a video series installation titled Fermata and a collection of digital prints titled Game Day. Each video in the Fermata series is a continuous loop of the few seconds right before a pinnacle moment in a sports event– an Olympic diver gently bounces on the edge of the diving board but never dives, runners sway back and forth on their hands and knees on the track in the moments before the starting gun but never run. The concentration and anticipation of these infinite, captured moments is almost unbearable, but a meditation emerges in the discomfort that can be curiously liberating. The Game Day digital prints are tracings of the ball’s movement throughout a game creating a complex drawing. Two different colored lines, denoting team possession, map a web of movement creating shape and form. All attachment to spectacular plays, scores, or sports heroes is surrendered in both bodies of work and all come to rest on an equal playing field.

Brian Patrick Franklin is an Assistant Professor of Expanded Media in the School of Art at Illinois State University, Bloomington. He earned his Masters in Fine Arts from Pennsylvania State University and his Bachelors in Fine Arts from SUNY-Fredonia.

The exhibition is generously sponsored by an Anonymous Donor.