Emergence examines two series of works by Lita Albuquerque: Red Pigment Paintings and Beekeeper. Both projects began in 2005 and are a continuing series. Emergence looks at essentially two works in which complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple processes or actions.
Red Pigment Paintings are created with pure powder pigments—a medium used by Albuquerque since the 1970s—blown onto panels by wind or Albuquerque’s own breath. Employing air as a conduit of the pigment allows for practically infinite variations and iterations of pigment in space. The intense red hue against each of the sixteen pigmented ivory black canvasses is a record of the air’s movement that normally goes unseen. However, the record of wind and breath recalls representational imagery of natural occurrences as well: splashing waves, volcanic eruptions, bursting flames, and floating dust.
Beekeeper was created in collaboration with Jon Beasley and Chandler McWilliams. The works in this series include a computer generated digital installation and a set of photographic prints. In the installation, Beekeeper is controlled by generative computer software, creating a continuous flow of pixel movement following a unique path every time. An image of a beekeeper is in a constant cycle, dissolving from a solid form into a sea of wandering pixels, and then emerging whole again as the pixels re-condense the figure.
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Emergence offers a close look at two series of Albuquerque’s works connected in form and process. Both deal with particles constituting a form, and both are enactments of unfolding and becoming. Beekeeper and Red Pigment Paintings function as symbolic models of actualizations of process that point to essential shifts in ways of seeing, forms of representation, and modes of being.
