Installations
Light has no substance, no defined form, no weight, no mass, no boundaries, but completely envelops us. As an artistic medium it offers no limitations except those set by the technologies employed. Each installation explores light as an immersive sculptural experience through optical holography, photography, video, lasers or sunlight.
inFLUX
Installation, Currents New Media 2021, Center For Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe, NM, June 18-27, 2021
Evoking our most elemental vibration, thirty laser pendulums move in erratic trajectories across arcs of white sand. The light installation visualizes the ceaseless motion at our core that binds our body and all matter together.
- Sally Weber, re: inFLUX
Sally Weber, inFLUX installation, Currents New Media 2021, CCA, Santa Fe
VIDEO: Sally Weber, inFLUX installation, Currents New Media 2021, CCA, Santa Fe
Elemental (2016)
Elemental brings together ten works of light exploring the inter-relationship between ourselves and the natural elements. Inspired by the genesis of the elements from supernova and other massive cosmic explosions, as well as the fundamental energetic particles in constant motion at the all levels of life, light tethers us to our origin and inspires the tales we tell to make our passage meaningful emotionally, culturally, intellectually and spiritually.
Women and Their Work, Austin, TX, June 23-March 3, 2016
Artworks below (details, left to right, top to bottom):
I. Gallery view: Carbon Rose, Flux, Entangled, Echo, Elemental video
II. Flux, floor installation with twenty laser pendulums drawing over sand
III. Passion panels: Emergence (ruby), Allure (black & gold), Immersed (lapis)
IV. Core: holographic image in cast iron cube
V. Trace: Emotions, holographic panels in wooden case
VIDEO: Elemental installation with multiple works by Sally Weber, January 23 - March 3, 2016, Women and Their Work, Austin, Texas
CORE hologram
Elemental, at the Butler (2018)
The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio, Jan 21-July 22, 2018
Elemental was remounted at the Butler Institute of American Art in 2018. Flux was reconfigured and expanded to twenty-eight pendulums over two sand areas on the floor.
In Flux can be understood as a light installation in which 28 laser pendulums hang above . . . two sand fields . . . swaying, gyrating, illuminating the sand, while leaving traces of their erratic paths. The interactions of the pendulums as they pass, twist and occasionally collide, reflect the energy inherent in nature on all levels, all scales.
- Singh, G., "Alchemical Transformation,” IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, vol. 38, no. 03, 2018, (5-7)
Gallery view (above) includes: sculptural works, In Flux and Allure; hologram, Core; acrylic print, Immersed; hologram on pedestal, Entangled; and photograph, Carbon Rose.
Details below (left to right, top to bottom):
II. Three details of In Flux, light traces on sand
III. Echo, digital hologram
IV. Triptych of Echo, Azure, Emerald
VIDEO: In Flux, light traces on sand
Realms (2013)
Holographic film on acrylic, 24”x 24”, LED illuminators.
Translucent images hover above the surface of the five holographic panels set on low pedestals. Each image suggests the properties of form, flow, connection, mass or a spark while the radial grid of an astrolabe bisects the forms and floats above the deeply receding particle light fields that fall away below.
Works pictured above (top left to right):
I. Connect
II. Contain
III. Flow
IV. Mass
V. Spark
Speed of Shadows (2012)
Holographic emulsion on glass panel 24”x 12”, mirror shelf and suspended black sphere, 8”x 10”x 10”
Since a shadow has neither mass nor energy, it is not constrained by the laws of physics. A spherical shadow obscuring the origin of a glow beyond, floats in a cube of blue light in front of the glass panel while a suspended, solid black sphere reflects darkly in a mirror below.
Chasm to Consequence (2008)
Chasm (2001) hologram, film on glass 14” x 24”. Pedestal with 6” glass lens magnifying a matchbox from Windows on the World, the restaurant at the top of the North Tower, World Trade Center, New York City.
The List, a hanging scroll 110” x 40”, is a compilation of misdirecting phrases coined by the George W. Bush Administration between 2001-2008. Each phrase from The List is projected across the scroll behind Chasm, chronologically from the bottom to top.
Signature of the Source (1997)
Eight holographic glass panels, 8’ diameter.
Black holes emit turbulent jets of particles and light across the universe. Tracing back along their trajectory locates them, but light, time, and space fuse at the event horizon, masking the origin.
The hologram, "Signature of the Source,” should be understood as a "Picture of Phenomena" and relates to the newest astronomical developments concerning "Black Holes" in outer space. The discovery that such heavenly bodies don't just attract matter and light, but also release them in its middle axis was an inspiration for the artist in her creation. . . . Sally Weber took up the historical lighting concept in her work and interpreted it in a new manner.
- Michael Fehr, Director of the Osthaus Museum, 1997, Interferenzen, Holographic Magazine in Two Languages, 8, Jahrgang, IV/97, (17)
Commissioned by the Werner Richard - Dr. Carl Dörken Foundation for the Osthaus Museum, Hagen, Germany
Spiral Passage (1995)
Three holographic windows project solar spectra, fifty-foot diameter spiral mirror maze on the floor.
Exhibition: "Sally Weber Im Licht - In Light", 1995, central gallery of the Osthaus Museum, part of the solo exhibition Sally Weber Im Licht / In Light, Holographische Arbeiten / Holographic Works.
This installation marks the passage of time by creating a sundial within the museum gallery. Holographic panels cover the windows and project the sun’s diurnal and annual movement as spectra across the thirty-foot walls. Creating a mirage on the floor, the reflected light from the mirrors is visible from some angles, but not others. The maze implies the turning of the world’s axis and surrounding sweep of light.