Meridel Rubenstein

www.meridelrubenstein.com

©Meridel Rubenstein, Oppenheimer's Chair

Oppenheimer's Chair

Oppenheimer’s Chair was a commission for the first SITE Santa Fe International Biennial which intentionally opened on the 50th anniversary of the first atomic test at Trinity. This room-size glass house, with sandblasted imagery and a video projection onto a glass chair, is a meditation on nature and the shedding of defensive postures after 50 years of the Cold War. An armored sentry figure, made of transparent film in a standing steel frame, guards the portal. The chair video can be seen through him, transmutating in his solar plexus.

©Meridel Rubenstein, Oppenheimers Chair with Armor

Photography is how I best convert my ideas materially. Everything comes in the eye just like a camera lens and is upside down and backwards. I've always felt my job is to turn things right side up. I do see things like tonalities and sharpness in a very 19th century way. But I have done everything I can to break down that distancing that happens when photographic images are faraway on a wall with a cold gelatin surface instead of enveloping the viewer. So now I just say I’m an artist using photography, not very traditionally.

©Meridel Rubenstein, Poison Nectar

©Meridel Rubenstein, Ghost House Snake's skin

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