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Pittsburgh Cultural Trust Announces

UVA (United Visual Artists) Installation

Vantage Points

at Wood Street Galleries | Pittsburgh Cultural District
Friday, April 28 to Sunday, August 27, 2023

Pittsburgh, PA─ The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust announces UVA (United Visual Artists) installation Vantage Points will be on view from Friday, April 28 through Sunday, August 27, 2023 at Wood Street Galleries, 601 Wood Street, (above the PRT Wood Street T-station), in Pittsburgh’s Cultural District.  The gallery, free and open to the public, is a project of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust.  The exhibition opening is also part of the Cultural Trust’s spring Gallery Crawl in the Cultural District on Friday, April 28.  For more information, visit TrustArts.org.

Vantage Points brings together two works by UVA, Present Shock and Vanishing Point 3:1 #3, both concerned with perspective and perception and how we experience and try to make sense of the world around us. 

Present Shock draws inspiration from Alvin Toffler's seminal book Future Shock, to create an installation that confronts the viewer with a barrage of statistical clocks representing real-time information about the world. From life-changing global events to the banal trivia of everyday existence, the installation highlights how the speed and volume of data in the Information Age present new challenges to our limited cognitive apparatus. Many of the statistics presented occur at timescales and spatial horizons that similarly defy our perception or comprehension. By disturbing the inertia of the here and now, the relentless data reveal the fluctuating state of dynamic transformation that characterizes life on earth.

Inspired from the perspective of Renaissance drawings by Leon Battista Alberti, Leonardo da Vinci, and Albrecht Dürer, Vanishing Point 3:1 #3 plays with the rhythm of proportions, the harmony of form, and the interaction of color in an improvisational meditation on perception. Each line, shape, and color play a role in constructing this generative audiovisual symphony. A rule-based system endlessly assembles and re-assembles fundamental elements into new abstract formations and harmonic sequences, producing novel compositions in a collaboration between man and machine. Light itself becomes an instrument here as color frequencies are expressed through corresponding sounds. In a nod to Bauhaus design principles, simple geometric shapes protrude and recede, occasionally giving the illusion of depth and spatial configurations that seem almost solid but, ultimately, betray their instability and flicker, vibrate and dissolve.
(A first iteration of Vanishing Point was shown in 2013 as part of United Visual Artists’ Other Spaces solo exhibition at 180 The Strand, London.)

UVA (United Visual Artists) is a London based collective founded in 2003 by British artist Matt Clark. UVA’s diverse body of work integrates new technologies with traditional media such as sculpture, performance, and site-specific installation.

Drawing from sources ranging from ancient philosophy to theoretical science, the practice explores the cultural frameworks and natural phenomena that shape our cognition, creating instruments that manipulate our perception and expose the relativity of our experiences. Rather than material objects, UVA’s works are better understood as events in time, in which the performance of light, sound and movement unfolds.

UVA has been commissioned internationally by institutions around the globe.  The practice has an open and inclusive approach to collaboration and works with artists from various artistic mediums, notably dance, film, music, and fashion.   UVA team members: Matt Clark, Willem Kempers, Will Laslett, Maximo Recio, Lee Sampson, and Jon Skerritt.  uva.co.uk

The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust welcomes everyone to discover art from around the world and around the corner in the Cultural District.  Five distinct galleries, owned and programmed by the Cultural Trust, are free and open to the public year-round, including Wood Street Galleries, SPACE, 707 Penn Gallery, 820 Liberty Gallery, and 937 Liberty Gallery.  Public art installations are also part of the Trust’s commissioned works within the District’s 14-block easy-walking footprint. These public works of art reflect the creative urban energy, depth, and charm of Pittsburgh and the Cultural District. 

Gallery Hours: Wednesday-Thursday: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Friday-Saturday: 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Sunday: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, visit TrustArts.org/VisualArts or call guest services at 412-456-6666.

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The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust has overseen one of Pittsburgh’s most historic transformations: turning a seedy red-light district into a magnet destination for arts lovers, residents, visitors, and business owners.  Founded in 1984, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust is a non-profit arts organization whose mission is the cultural and economic revitalization of a 14-block arts and entertainment/residential neighborhood called the Cultural District.  The District is one of the country’s largest land masses “curated” by a single nonprofit arts organization.  A major catalytic force in the city, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust is a unique model of how public-private partnerships can reinvent a city with authenticity, innovation and creativity.  Using the arts as an economic catalyst, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust has holistically created a world-renowned Cultural District that is revitalizing the city, improving the regional economy and enhancing Pittsburgh’s quality of life.  Thanks to the support of foundations, corporations, government agencies and thousands of private citizens, the Trust stands as a national model of urban redevelopment through the arts. 

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