Luminosity/Luminous Show @ Gallery Ü 5/20
Seeing differently from the every day visuals is the goal of New York City painter and Swedish immigrant Anders Knutsson in his Luminosity/Luminous show at Gallery Ü through early June. Some might call his use of phosphorus pigment paints and costumes a gimmick. I call it "better than the 1960s," which I also witnessed.

Gallery Ü (prounounced "oou") in the ArtCarde at 530 Euclid Avenue between Euclid and Prospect Ave. has black knockout cloth over two thirds of the Gallery's arcade windows. Through windows of the remaining gallery space, the gallery "annex," one can see from the arcade hall alluring paintings of trees, plus a kitsch-seeming image of the Verrazano Narrows suspension bridge between Brooklyn where Knutsson lives, and Staten Island.

Pity the poor daytime passersby in the arcade without the opportunity to see how these paintings can transform at dusk. During the April 15th evening opening the gallery operator had the arcade lights turned down and small groups of viewers in the annex gallery space saw something they've never seen before. This is Knutsson's phosphorus (which glows-in-the-dark after being exposed to light) painted reenactment of a sunset sky over a lit up Verrazano Narrows bridge.

In regular lighting, the crowd gathered facing the painting. When the gallery lights went off, my eyes felt a small sensation while adjusting to the glow. For about 30 seconds the folks focused on the painting of the bridge uttered "OOU!" and "AH!" This sunset faded in less than a minute. So fast you can see it dissipate. Kitch?

Even without the glow, in normal light, the nearby paintings of large trees seem to harbor life beyond what is easily reproduced on canvas, like these were images of large mammals lounging about.

The most colorful luminescent show however, is in the blacked out main portion of Gallery Ü. In normal light the paintings are very colorful. When the lights go out, your eyes experience a "shift." Among the new set of colorful images that appear are of people dancing wildly. The shift to seeing the glowing paintings is a subtle roller coaster for the eyes. While dimming all the time the luminosity of these paintings lasts for several hours.

During the opening, Lynn Deering, Director of the Cleveland State University Dance Program and Joe Booth of the Dance/Theatre Collective, disrobed from Kimonos revealing glow-in-the-dark tights. The dancers moved to music performed by Han Eddy van der Kuil on drums, formally of industrial band DINK, Craig Pearsall on keyboard and song by Shelly Gracon, both of industrial band DOT. Or did the dancers flow? While one could determine male from female by their glowing designs, during the 20-minute dance the two dancers seemed like human shaped glowing amebas that flowed in and out of the surrounding glowing paintings. After the show, I felt revved up, as if I rode my bicycle back and forth over the Detroit-Superior Bridge a couple times.

Knutsson, 67, immigrated to the U.S. in 1967 and is a U.S. citizen. He's studied light for many years. "A lot of interesting things go on with the retinal system at low light levels," he said. "You have only indirect vision. You experience a body system that you don't normally encounter. It is like seeing stars at night. Sometimes you'll only see a star out of the corner of your eye and can't see it when you try to look at it."

Clevelanders are taken by light shows. The first large display of outdoor electric "arc" light in the world was held by electrical inventor Charles F. Brush to the amazement of thousands in Public Square on the evening of April 29, 1879. These days, the tops of downtown skyscrapers are lit as well as a number of bridges across the Cuyahoga River. Cleveland was fortunate enough to have a "Lasarium" in the old Allen Theater in Playhouse Square during the 1970s as well as the December 2003 show Luminocity: Art and Technology Igniting Cleveland, which lit the exterior of the Cleveland Trust Building and Rotunda at Euclid Avenue and East 9th Street.

Light is a natural for Clevelanders. If you like light in the dark, make sure to see the Luminosity/Luminous show at at Artcade ARTwalk on Fri 5/20 between 12-9PM. See it at Gallery Ü this Friday and Saturday from 12-4PM. Show will close the first or second Friday in June depending on a performance schedule.
from Cool Cleveland contributor Lee Batdorff Lbatdorff@adva.com

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