Right off Industrial Boulevard, along with several vacant buildings and old antique stores, sits Light & Sie, a small but surprisingly cutting edge art gallery.
Light & Sie presents a wide variety of international contemporary art in a variety of mediums. Their Web site states that they “are dedicated to being aesthetically and conceptually rigorous, and fully aware of our responsibility to show the art of our time.”
The space has an interesting location but the interior of the gallery makes it truly unique. The space is quite large for a gallery and wide open; the first room guests enter is huge and its sole furnishings are the canvases on the wall. Visitors then enter the smaller exhibition space near the rear, which is much more compact but also lends itself to the art rather than vice versa.
Organized by exhibiting artists, the two rooms of Light & Sie currently house two artists who work in very different mediums. Each of the artists works solely in their form of media and certainly works to “question the role that art plays in the universe,” one of the mission statements the gallery embraces.
Currently on exhibit in the first room, or main gallery is an exhibit entitled “Wicked Creek,” a photography series by Belgian artist Wouter Deruytter. In this exhibit Deruytter chronicles the aftermath of massive forest fires, which occurred in Montana during the summer of 2007. His photographs focus on the landscape and the firefighters who endeavored to fight the fires and clear the forest after the damage.
The landscapes are both majestic and depressing. The forests of Montana are awe-inspiring but the damage that resulted from the fires is also evident. Viewers are forced to recognize the role they play in being good stewards of the land and the damage that can be wrought upon it.
Although the fires seem distant and long ago at first glance, it is through the dramatic, personal pictures of the firefighters that viewers truly understand the relationship between man and nature. It seems that Deruytter not only wants to portray the need for humans to reconnect with nature but to also represent “our need to tame nature itself.” His photographs of the firefighters include individual portraits and also images of the firefighters at work, hauling waste and tools up and down the mountains.
Throughout the exhibit viewers have the opportunity to connect with a tragedy they may or may not have remembered through Deruytter’s heartfelt images.
In the second, smaller space at Light & Sie, artist Sarah Anne Lobb’s exhibit entitled simply “New Paintings” is on display.
True to the gallery’s mission, Lobb works solely with paint and canvas. Her paintings are done on a fairly small scale and are painted in an abstract style with lots of bright colors and jagged edges, often referred to as “non-representational.”
Her paintings have been described as “casual precision” and “informal formalism.” For the casual viewers it is the colors and the crooked shapes that are most prevalent in her work. The small space they occupy at Light & Sie is the perfect complement for her small but pertinent collection.
The owners of the gallery have developed their space with a very specific mission and the artists currently on exhibit at the gallery speak to that mission. They have developed their skills in a single medium and obviously question the role their art plays in the bigger picture of things. Both artists will be on exhibit at Light & Sie through May 24.