Tim White-Sobieski

Tim White-Sobieski is a video and installation artist based in New York and Berlin.

Tim White-Sobieski began showing in New York in the early 1990s his “Blue Paintings”. These paintings were visually and aesthetically connected with the artist’s later photo- and video- works like “Presence” and “Runner”, “Venice Vacation” and “Queen Mary”. Emphasis on the role of the unconscious in his paintings had affinities with visual Abstractionism and literary Existentialism.

In 1995, White-Sobieski started working on his “Moving Paintings” and “Moving Drawings” projects as a series of experiments in image animation which were based partially on lingo scripting language that was used in Macromedia applications. At that period, the artist studied music composition and became especially interested in musical architecture of silence of John Cage. In response to the Cage's objective to look through sounds and not at them, White-Sobieski created his infinite animations of paintings and drawings as a parallel life of an artwork, “image in process”. White-Sobieski wrote the scripts for programming infinite ways of controlling behavior of shapes, colors and image parameters in a video frame (and in a digital image if not video); some of the work was finalized and exhibited in multiple venues, some never ended and has been frequently dated as ongoing.

One of the most successful experiments in combining "Moving paintings" animation principles with real-time video editing/rendering technique was the project "I repeat myself when under stress", 1999, exhibited in New York, Chicago and Torino. Later the same methods were developed in hand-rendered films from the project “Terminal". Almost each video frame of the series was hand-drawn, and, assembled, created semi-abstract moving compositions. These projects were critically acclaimed at the Prague Biennale 2003, Lyon Biennale (2003) and Bucharest Biennale (2004).

Most of the work by White-Sobieski, whether photography, video or sculpture, is described by critics as “painterly”. Videos “Presence” and “Runner” (both 1998-1999) were drawn from the World War II documentary footage. Transferring film onto video and video into photography, White-Sobieski continued a process of cultural abstraction and proved that processes of mediation are potentially infinite. The further he moved in historical time and space, the closer he approached the psychological "truth" of that event Tim White-Sobieski’s compositions offer a meditation on the discussion started by Jean Baudrillard ("history survives its disappearance").

The subject of genetic memory and the theme of war were also developed in "Confession" (2000–2002), “Before They Were Beatles” (2004) and “Queen Mary” (2005). From "Confession", he started a series of videos with the visual meditation on memory and the postulation that "the memory is perhaps genetically transferred from generation to generation". While "Confession" had a multi-channel narrative sequence and dealt with a twin nomad-figure (as a split personality), the later videos of the artist also examine migrant characters in “Closer to Fall”, “Awakening”, “Route 17N” and “The Sound and the Fury”.

The “Terminal” series of videos (“Terminal by Day”, “Terminal at Night”, “Terminal Heart” and “On the Wing”) were created between 2001 and 2004. Along with his signature pulsating blues and reds, these videos marked his involvement with the ambient music of various composers including Brian Eno, “frippertronics” of Robert Fripp and experiments of John Cage. Between 2004 and 2006, Tim White-Sobieski created several abstract-figurative video compositions: “New York City Suite”, “Vertigo”, and “Desire” among them. The artist continued working in the direction of music-visual synthesis, developing new methods and algorithms to generate color, rhythm and animations based on sound parameters, further developing ideas that were explored in the "Moving Paintings" projects.

In 2005, three artists were invited to create one art work each for the Louis Vuitton headquarters in Paris: James Turrell, Olafur Eliasson and Tim White-Sobieski. This was a cooperation of the artists under one roof that individually featured work of each one.

"Vertigo" and "New York City Suite" were created based on similar principles of compositions as in the previous "moving drawings" projects, where the final rendered video composition was digitally assembled from hundreds of video clips and digital images assembled from the artist's data bank and released on DVD. The projects later were shown in the following museums: Malaga Museum of Contemporary Arts, ARTIUM Centro-Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporáneo.

In 2006-2007, White-Sobieski created a series of images of deconstructed cityscapes, eliminating distinctions between design, painting, photography and video (“Deconstructed Reality” and “Deconstructed Cities”).

In 2007, Tim White completed a series of large scale photographs and a video titled “Awakening” and in 2008, as expansion of the same theme, “Route 17 North”. The series’ near-repetition rhythm constructs a narrative logic while the artist reveals the image of American youth in the beginning of the 21st century, in the world of post-modern simulacra. Both of the videos and photographic series, figurative in nature, demonstrate the influence of literature and narrative filmmaking on the artist.

In 2009, White-Sobieski completed his short film “The Sound and the Fury” after the first part of the William Faulkner’s novel. The first version of the film was shown in Barcelona as “Seventh Heaven” (based on the subtitle of the literary work - “April Seventh, 1928”). Departing from “Deconstructed Reality” where time appears not sequentially but simultaneously, in “Seventh Heaven” White-Sobieski combines incongruous elements; geometric abstraction is superimposed over semi-abstract human shapes. The artist's work has a reference to the initial writer's idea; Faulkner borrowed his title from “Macbeth”: “It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” In his work, the artist presents a video translation of the main character’s nonlinear, non-interpretive point of view on time.

Between 2008 and 2011 the artist created several light installation projects; “Nebulae” and “Light Circles” were shown in Germany, England and Scandinavia. These installations include LED-based, computer coded infinite light animations. In addition, the fiber-optic light projects “Lighthouse” and “Cold Forest” incorporated stainless steel compositions. The projects “Light Circles” (2008) and “Garden of Stones” (2009) were based on Seamless Multi-Channel HD Video technology (© tim white-sobieski). Both installations incorporate 16-channel video projections, high-definition synchronized video source, aluminum and stainless steel sculptures, LED-fiber optics light objects, and light program synchronized with video. One of the artist's largest and technologically advanced projects was commissioned earlier by the LVMH/ Louis Vuitton group in Paris for their flagship building on Champs-Élysées in Paris. It is currently the biggest seamless fiber-optics field: the video was rendered at resolution four times exceeding high definition standard.

In 2008, White-Sobieski created and engineered a video wall with 144 synchronized vertical LCD monitors for Kimpo Airport in Seoul, Korea, currently the biggest video wall in the world. The artist continued developing new methods of controlling and displaying video with the purpose of integration a moving image within architectural interiors and on any shapes, forms and materials.

In 2008-2010, the main premise of the artist’s work is the interpretation of ideas via fusing video, sculpture, light installations and photography. In particular, his works of this period have always a narrative or literary element ( Visor’d, Garden of Stones, The Sound and the Fury, Cold Forest) and inspired by poetry of Walt Whitman or prose of William Faulkner.

The artist’s inventory of video works currently enlists more than 60 titles, with multi-channel synchronized video installations and stand-alone single theater presentations. His works are currently collected by many museums and institutions worldwide: CGAC Santiago de Compostela, Denver Art Museum, Domus Artium 2002, Salamanca, Elgiz Museum of Contemporary Art, Istanbul, Museo de Bellas Artes, Santander, Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, Stiftung kunst:raum Sylt Quelle, Nomas Foundation, Rome, Kunstverein Wiesbaden.