An installation of found optical objects combined with video projections.
An avid dreamer for my entire life, my childhood was spent in the gardens of my imagination. I often decorated corners of my home with objects I considered enchanted, like stones, flowers, glitter, and kaleidoscopes. The air of the mystical and ethereal still courses through my veins as an adult artist, and my main medium is light for this reason.
Rita Jimenez, 2020
Found objects such as mirrors, colored glass, and light reflecting materials such as iridescent film, mylar, and fabric are combined with video projections in the installations I make. Each set up is based on the idea of the Ultimate Feeling, the main concept behind the sublime. However, the aim behind my concept is to redefine what the sublime is – to explore a personal, more feminine sublime. A sublime moment that draws inspiration from ethereal and ineffable experiences like dreams, déjà vu, and childhood memories. I video document these personal, mystical experiences through natural phenomena like prismatic light refractions, glittering water, and diffracted sunlight. A big part of my work is documentative, but the physical installations rely significantly on the process.
My approach is playful, relying on the process to be as unbiased as possible, with intuition being a motivating structure. That being said, the arrangement and assemblage are not completely random – it is intentional. When I feel the piece has a breath to it, that is when I know it’s finished. Sometimes I feel as if I am merely channeling a force or energy through light. I like to refer to my work not so much as sculptural but in more fantastical terms such as portals or light shrines. I aim to evoke a sense of a universal subconsciousness, a shared memory – to allow my viewers to experience the light as the “Sublime”.
Rita Jimenez is a multimedia light artist based in Jersey City, New Jersey. With light not only as her main medium, it is also her main subject throughout her work. She uses a combination of film photography, video, projections, and light installation using prisms, iridescent material, and diffraction. She has her BFA in Photography and an MFA in New Media from New Jersey City University. The themes of her work are Surrealist in nature, with an Impressionist approach towards the Sublime, dreams, and memory. Her light installations induce a sense of playfulness and childlike wonder, while yearning to create a space that welcomes and heals. Her MFA “Refracting the Sublime” included several projection installations with light reflective and refractive materials that included video imagery of natural elements that evoked a feeling of the Sublime. Her work has been shown in New Jersey, New York, and Barcelona. Her recent immersive light installation was at a residency at Smush Gallery in Jersey City; a project titled “Virtual Vacation” that played upon scenes of a spa or hotel room in which the visitor engaged with different light stations that transported them to concepts such as “reflection”, “cleansing”
EDGE OF LIGHT
Virtual Opening & Viewing