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Ella Powell:

You’re listening to WTJU Charlottesville. The Les Yeux Du Monde (LYDM) gallery
presents an exhibit featuring work from Wolfgang Buttress, now, through November 16th.
For Arts This Week, we spoke with the gallery Director, Hagan Tampellini.

Hagan Tampellini:

I’m Hagen Tampellini, Director of Les Yeux Du Monde (LYDM) Gallery in
Charlottesville. We’re really excited to just have opened a new exhibition of work by
internationally recognized British artist Wolfgang Buttress at the gallery, which will run
through November 16. The exhibition is titled NINFEO (Explorations, Studies and
Responses), and is in response to his major installation of the same name NINFEO at the
University of Virginia’s new Contemplative Sciences Center, which just opened.

So, Wolfgang Buttress is widely recognized for immersive, multi sensory artworks that
often draw from the rhythms of the natural world and incorporate technology to shed light
on environmental issues. He just completed a major installation titled NINFEO. It’s an
installation composed of 3,320 laser etched glass blocks that create a room into which
one enters. The new Contemplative Sciences Center at the University is positioned right
outside of the Dell pond, and the installation was built to pull data from the Dell pond
outside to inform a light and sound experience in the installation. So there’s a sensor that
sits at the bottom of the Dell pond that brings movement from the pond in real time into
this room made of laser etched glass blocks and the data in the pond, combined with
movement in the room, create an ever changing score of sound and light that play through
the glass blocks. It’s unbelievable. The colors evoke water so one almost feels like they’re
at the bottom of the Dell pond, particularly because the laser etching within the glass
blocks is of water lilies. But there’s also a really meditative soundscape that plays through
the glass blocks that Wolfgang Buttress composed in collaboration with Karmen Line
Collective.

Wolfgang’s show is also particularly special for this fall because we are marking 30 years of
Les Yeux Du Monde as celebrating our 30 year anniversary. My late mother, Lyn Bolen
Warren started the gallery in 1995 when she was getting her PhD in art history at UVA. She
started it out of her house, which is on the property where we are now located. So she was
originally mounting shows in her living room, but as she was able to get it off the ground, it
moved to a few different locations in downtown Charlottesville, and eventually she moved
it back to the original mountaintop location in 2009 and had WG Clark, who’s a remarkable,
award winning modern architect, design the building that now houses the gallery. He’s
done really major buildings all over but she had always loved his work and known him
because he was also a professor in the architecture school at UVA. So she eventually
asked him to design a separate building on the mountaintop location to house the gallery,
and we have been there ever since. And she named it the eyes of the world in French, both
because of the amazing views, but also as a metaphor for, you know, art as a way of
seeing. And she was a really brilliant art historian. She had a PhD in art history from UVA,
and she really saw art history as a lens on the history of the world. And thought that, you
know, if we understood that, then we could understand ourselves, and that great
contemporary art is a reflection of the time in which we live and who we are as people. She
really did so much to pioneer and develop the art community in this area. So the gallery
sort of continues in that tradition today, representing incredible Virginia based artists, but
also bringing artists like Wolfgang from, you know, much further afield, to this community,
so that folks in this area can be exposed to their work. And we are celebrating 30 years of
the gallery with Wolf’s show, which is really fitting given NINFEO the installation was so
generously dedicated in her honor by Carrie Brown and Steve Epstein. And the body of
work that Woolf has done that’s in the gallery right now is a response to it. So it all feels like
a really fitting and beautiful way to celebrate her legacy and 30 years of the gallery both
looking back on our first 30 years and ahead to what the next 30 will bring.

And our new exhibition at the gallery is particularly special because it is a series of
paintings and drawings that Wolfgang did in response to NINFEO: his installation at UVA’s
Contemplative Sciences Center. It’s a series of studies that he did of water lilies before the
sculptural installation at UVA was created. So you can see for the first time early sketches
of water lilies that in. Formed the major installation, but it’s also a series of works on paper
and paintings that respond to NINFEO. So they’re works that he’s done since the
installation, while completely different in medium, they evoke the same meditative,
tranquil feeling that his installation does in a really, really remarkable way. He’s also
recognized for large scale, often public works that require an entire studio team. But in this
exhibition at the gallery, you can see Wolfgang buttress’s hand in all of the works. So it’s a
really, really special and unique opportunity. It’s a really beautiful installation that is so
fitting in conversation with the unique architecture of the space itself. There’s a grid of
works on paper on one wall that mirrors a glass block wall, one of WG Clark’s signature
materials directly opposite it. So the forms in Woolf’s work sort of echo the architectural
forms in the gallery, and there are even within the exhibition, glass blocks featured that are
from Woolf’s installation at the university. So there are actually sculptural works on display
as well his glass blocks in conversation with our glass block is really, really special. The
work is really striking in conversation with the architecture of the space. But Woolf’s work
is also just extraordinary. There’s a series of richly layered oil paintings that evoke water
lilies, as he has featured within each glass block in NINFEO but in a much more loose,
atmospheric way, yet they still convey the same essence that NINFEO his installation
does. There’s also a series of 75 small drawings on paper mounted in an enormous grid on
one of the walls of the gallery. The palette is a gradient from light to dark. And so the
installation as a body of work is really, really striking. And there’s also a series of actual
glass block sculptures that are sort of remaining glass blocks left over from his installation
at the university. So they’re really limited in number and really, really special for us to have.
And it’s amazing since no two glass blocks in the installation are the same, to be able to
study the nuance differences between the plant matter and the water lilies laser etched
within each glass block, they’re really delicate, and each is really lovely. There’s also an
exhibition in the upstairs of the gallery right now that sheds light on our first 30 years of
history of the gallery. We really hope you’ll come see both the homage to our first 30 years
in upstairs, and also Wolfgang’s show downstairs. The gallery is open Thursday to Sunday
from one to 5pm so come by anytime on those dates and times. But we also do private
appointments very often outside of those hours. To schedule a private appointment, you
can email info at LYDMgallery.com or call or text, 434-882-2622.

Ella Powell:

NINFEO (Explorations, Studies, and Responses) by Wolfgang Buttress will be on
display, now, through November 16th. The Les Yeux Du Monde (LYDM) gallery is located at
841 Wolf Trap Road on a mountainside 15 minutes outside of downtown Charlottesville.
The gallery is open from 1-5 pm Thursday through Sunday. You can find more information
at LYDMGallery.com

Arts This Week is supported by the UVA Arts Council and Piedmont Virginia Community
College. PVCC Arts presents a rich array of dance, music, theater, and visual arts
programming. Learn more at pvcc.edu For WTJU, I’m Ella Powell.