Deborah Cornell and Richard Cornell at L.A. Center for Digital Art

Selected by:
Kathryn Poindexter, California Museum of Photography
Rebecca Morse, L.A. County Museum of Art
Rex Bruce, Los Angeles Center For Digital Art

Artists' Statement
Mystery attracts imagination. This exhibition is based on the immense space of ocean, air, and planetary movement, eclipses and inundations, influenced by the looming presence of human analytics and disturbances.

The video Breath concerns the invisible transfer of oxygen into the atmosphere from the action of innumerable planktonic organisms, an environmental phenomenon that sustains human life, and that is threatened by warming atmosphere and changing ocean chemistry. The work conflates the deep time of planetary movement with the momentary intake of breath. A collaboration between Deborah Cornell (visual artist) and Richard Cornell (composer, sound artist), Breath proposes simultaneous worlds, where the reality that we perceive is interrupted by the complex underlying influences shaping the world.

Breath suggests a complex narrative among ocean, land, and humans, implying both physical dependence and cultural response. The shifting imagery transforms through ocean depths, severe lightning storms, consuming flame, and fleeting references to human cultures. The sound is from field recordings of terrestrial and marine origin, extensively processed and mixed. Rain, wind, and thunder blend with roaring wildfire, moving water, the clicks of snapping shrimp, the wingbeats of birds, and human breathing.

The exhibition’s prints collectively invoke the complex incidental powers humans have amassed: severe heat in “Pivot Point”, the effects of climate change on migrations of birds and cetaceans in “Migration V”, the strange dark forces of genetics and mutation in “Beowulf”, and the enormous generative power of the solar disc in “Anguish in the Face of Uncertainty”. Mapping of energies and the interconnectedness of these forces become the through lines.

Biographies
Deborah and Richard Cornell’s collaborations are presented worldwide, including New York Town Hall, NY Electroacoustic Music Festival, Krakow Print Triennial, Taiwan Normal University, Buenos Aires, and Dubai.

Deborah’s awards include Grand Prix-Krakow Triennial and the Bunting/Radcliffe Institute, Harvard. Her works are seen in Krakow, Istanbul, Melbourne, and Los Angeles, with presentations in New York, Dallas, and San Francisco. Collections include Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Hangzhou Art Academy, DaNang Museum, Turku Art Museum Finland, RISD Museum, RMIT Melbourne, Weisman Art Museum.

Richard Cornell works in acoustic and electroacoustic media. Awards include the National Endowment for the Arts and the Fromm Foundation, with performances worldwide. He was commissioned by Boston Musica Viva, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and the Muir Quartet. Recordings are with Sony Classical, Albany, Summit, EMI Virgin Veritas, and Ravello labels.