Paula Crown: Bearings Down at the Goss-Michael Foundation

On April 7, 2016 artist Paula Crown will debut Bearings Down, an aesthetically striking and visually charged immersive installation at the Goss-Michael Foundation in Dallas. The work is an extension of the artist’s prolific studio practice and a harmonic blend of sound, performance and mark-making.

Bearings Down distills a landscape drawing that is magnified, rotated in space and crafted into a 3-dimensional image etched on glass. This rigid plane serves as the top of the rectangular sculpture that is subsequently shattered by ball bearings tossed by the artist. The hurtled bearings ignite a pattern of linear fractures of glass, breaking into organic forms, as some of the glass is nearly atomized upon impact. The experience of the physical piece is determined by the positioning of the viewer, although its depth and reflection make it difficult to determine scale, location and time. The relationship between object and video, along with the sound recordings, create arresting moments of musicality, color and material. Nature provides moments of reflective serendipity.

Crown presents a new level of ambiguity, challenging notions of where rigid and painterly forms meet.  This ephemeral space “in between” was referred to by Duchamp as the infra thin. As a cohesive experience, Bearings Down provides glimpses of the macro and micro, the internal and external, and the physical and emotional dimensions that we all inhabit and navigate as humans. The installation plays with convention – transforming modes of drawing and engaging multiple senses.

The opening reception will be held on April 7 from 7pm–9pm. The exhibition will be on display through May 19. The Goss-Michael Foundation is open Monday through Friday, 10am–4pm.