La Gloria (excerpt)

Michael Krondl

for full version please see: https://vimeo.com/236081222

This video consists of manipulated footage from the U.S. Virgin Island of St. John, shot approximately 6 months prior to the two hurricanes that devastated the island in the fall of 2017. The piece is part of a series I’m working on, very loosely inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy. With some irony intended, the title here refers to the opening stanza of Paradiso, “The glory [La Gloria] of him who animates all, penetrates the whole universe, shining more brightly in some places than others.” I echo the apocalyptic quality of Dante’s poem here (though admittedly without the text’s religiously redemptive qualities), but also, more literally, I reproduce the actual rhythm of the language. The perceptible flicker follows the poet’s Italian cadences. So do the flashes of color — these seemingly random flashes indicate pauses (punctuation) in the original verse.

Like much of my recent work, the proposed piece has implications both personal and environmental— the latter being highly pertinent to this spring's theme of "Abandonment and Loss.” The island has been both devastated and abandoned— another lovely spot lost from our planet.

Michael is a Czech-born, New York–based installation artist. Over the last dozen years or so he has worked with very large, digitally manipulated photographs that are installed in such a way as to transform space. He has exhibited in galleries, museums, and public spaces in the United States, Canada, Netherlands, Germany, and the Czech Republic. Recently, he has begun to experiment with video. For more, please see http://michaelkrondl.net/art.html