R.M. Vaughan
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Mar. 30, 2012 4:30PM EDT
All Sharon Switzer needs
is a comfy Freudian couch
Sharon Switzer at Corkin Gallery
Until 24 April, 7 Tank House Lane, Toronto; corkingallery.com
Sharon Switzer’s exquisite new video and digital print exhibition, Nearly Present, fills the lower hall of the Corkin Gallery with spectral, transient visions, spacey energy waves, a fleeting, incantatory visual hum, and no small amount of disco-ball glam. That’s a lot of punch from four flat screens and five framed prints.
I don’t pretend to fully understand the highly specialized, laptop mechanics behind Switzer’s creations, so I’ll let her explain them herself:
“I work with software that processes images over time. Within that, I work with an effect that’s called particle effect. All that really means is that the effect shoots out little white dots, or particles, that can look like circles or little streaks, and after that, there are about two hundred different options that I have for deciding how those dots look, how they move over time, how they react, in this made up physical space.”
