Sapovnela
Leila Spilman l Ryan Dawalt
May 6th- June 5th
11 Newel invites viewers to an exhibit that brings to light alternative views of the world around us. Sapovnela, opening on May 6th through June 5th features works by Leila Spilman and Ryan Dawalt. This two person exhibition presents screen prints, photography, wall hanging reliefs, and reflective and fluorescent materials that interact with light to form abstract expressions.
Leila Spilman salvages distorted, melted, and mold-laden film photography and brings them back to life using different printing methods. She depicts the creations of friends and family using non-representational movement enveloped in color, for example, Leila highlights her grandfather’s avant-garde photography from the late sixties which incorporates some of the first color photocopiers and early visual computer art, technologies both in their infancy at the time.
Artists
Leila Spilman b. 1994 in Sante Fe, New Mexico Leila Spilman lives and works in Dayton, Ohio. Through various methods of printing, Leila curates an archive of her grandfather's work, in a generational collaboration.
Alden Spilman b. 1945 in Bronxville, NY. Currently lives in Brewster on Cape Cod, MA. Alden Spilman explores the application of photographic processes.
Ryan DaWalt received his BFA from Indiana State University, MFA from Ohio University, and was most recently awarded an individual artists grant by QueensCouncil on the Arts. DaWalt has exhibited work internationally and is celebrated in the press.
Leila then ventures into kirlian imagery, the capturing of electric fields onto film. Instead of capturing light photons bouncing off the surface of an object, this process captures the electric flux that passes through objects, producing an aura-esque phenomenon created by unique patterns of energy discharge. These types of abstract photographs are then segmented and printed on various surfaces like glass-nanosphere-coated fabric, bringing out the negative spaces by way of reflected light.
Ryan Dawalt’s work also brings out the unseen using ultraviolet light, invisible to the human eye, and absorbed by certain materials that reflect back visible light, a phenomenon called UV-induced fluorescence. His art employs magnetism and light as the intrinsic components, structuring the space of vision and experience. Materials such as natural lodestone, magnets, and ferromagnetic pigment with phosphorus are embedded between wood shavings, acrylic paint, and polymer infused foam. These reactions result in fluorescent reliefs and intricate monochrome sketches.
The play with the electromagnetic spectrum in these works engages the concept of what is seen and unseen, how vision is structured and how we see and process light and the material world. Together, Leila Spilman and Ryan Dawalt use optical augmentation to reinterpret customary ways of viewing art.
