Street Views turns CAM inside-out, transforming our physical building into a public gallery through video installation. Since 2013, Street Views has exhibited the work of 20 internationally acclaimed artists and artist collectives.
On view
Charles Atlas: Painting by Numbers
In a career more than four decades long, St. Louis native Charles Atlas has produced pioneering videos and films, and engaged in vital collaborations with esteemed visual artists and choreographers including Marina Abramovič, Leigh Bowery, Lady Bunny, Michael Clark, Merce Cunningham, Mika Tajima / New Humans, and Yvonne Rainer, among others. He has done so while continuing to innovate with a personal practice that extends the boundaries of technology and moving imagery.
The title of Atlas’ video, Painting by Numbers, is an inventive riff on the popular hobby painting kits. Rather than suggesting a composition to be filled in, the artist has programmed a dynamic animation where endless flows of numbers suggest galaxies of connections that exceed the frame, time, and space. Originally created in 2011 as a three-channel synchronized video projection, Painting by Numbers has been reconfigured for its Street Views presentation, which viewers can see projected on the museum’s facade every night from dusk to midnight.
Charles Atlas moved from St. Louis to New York in 1970 at the age of 20. He worked closely with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and eventually became their first filmmaker-in-residence. Atlas coined the term “media dance” to describe the way he and his camera moved with, in, and around moving dancers. Painting by Numbers resonates with this approach: It resembles a digital choreography of numbers moving through space.
