Between 2018 and 2020 dancer Hien Hyunh and I collaborated on three projects exploring different mediums and ideas.

“Situations” (2019-2020) is a body of work created as a part of live improvisations of Dance, Music and Drawing held at various locations with or without a live audience. Reminiscent of the Happenings of the 50’s, every encounter is a unique, unrehearsed experience of interaction between artists generally coming together, often for the first time ever, for the sole purpose to experience and create together.

Situations live improvisation of Drawing, Dance and Music.

An evening of in-the-monent Inspiration and Experiment at the Red Poppy Art House on January 19, 2020 hosted by Elena @elena_mencarelli, as the closing of my exhibition "In Conversation with Dance"

Dancers: Juliana Mendoca @Juliana_mendoca_dance, Maria Lentzou @authenticmoventsf, Hien Hyunh @__.hien
Musicians: Aaron Kierbel @akierbel, Peter Whitehead @peterwhitehead9
Visual Artist: Ella Noe @ellanoeart

In “Contemplative Conversations” (2019-2020), Ella (visual artist) and Hien (movement artist) engage in weekly conversation of the intersection and integration of art practices, philosophy, spirituality, celestial bodies, intentionality, cultural history, family history, dreams, and nightmares.  Through their exchanges and conversation they wonder what arises and manifests in the in-between, the under-neaths, how do we access and share. 

In the ATA Window Gallery, Ella and Hien performed accumulating evenings in March 2020. These series of sharings offered both visual and kinetic space where the viewer was invited to witness a live conversation of movement and visual arts in a container. We wonder what echoes and emanate waves beyond the walls.

“In Conversation with Dance” (2018) is a body of work in which the artist experiments with capturing energy and movement through dance onto the canvas. 

When I first started I had no rigid vision for an outcome. I was interested in co-creating an experiment with movement and expression. I invited a dancer into my studio to play with the idea of generating a conversation that would bounce off the dance floor onto my canvas and back. We listened to each other’s sounds, not only music but also words, gestures, brushstrokes. We fed from one another’s expression and energy to learn about where movement generates, why we long to express it, and the dialectic between the paint and the pose, the pigment and the prancing. This ongoing project is about the recording of an experience onto the canvas.  

(The verbal conversations with the dancers held during short breaks and at the end of the sessions were recorded too). 

IN CONVERSATION WITH DANCE - at the Red Poppy Art House - Dec 2019 - Jan 2020

Curated by Elena Mencarelli

“Space is not a static, inert thing. Space is alive; space is dynamic; space is imbued with movement expressed by forces and counterforce; space vibrates and resounds with color, light and form in the rhythm of life” —Hans Hoffmann. 

Movement can manifest in many forms—tranquil, active, regular, wild, linear, syncopated. Even when we see no movement outside, there is still a fire dancing inside of us. As it generates transformation, which is the human being’s arrow pointing toward the future; movement is life. 

Ella Noe’s art is fed by the fascinating encounter between two different forms of movement, apparently distant: the movement within the space and the movement on a canvas. As co-creator of a synesthetic experience, alongside dancers and musicians, Noe embarks in a romantic conversation with dynamic energies; she is open to a dialogue that none of the participants knows how it will develop, and how it will conclude. Nonetheless, is their trust in the atavistic force of movement to guide them through a path built on unexpected gestures. Colors and lines impress the dialectic of movement onto the canvas, recording the impermanent art of dance as key-words of a conversation to be continued.

While portraying the dancers’ movement, Ella Noe pours the emptiness and the fullness of the space into the bi-dimensional experience of live painting. A space becomes alive only through the different energies of which it is the hearth.

The cross-pollination of the arts that manifests into Noe’s works suggests that a multi-item dialogue is more healing than a monologue, that feeling is more effective than listening, and that the experiences we live see many main-characters, beside us. Finally, the sense of connection is the sound that keeps our own life moving on a shared stage.

Red Poppy Art House Exhibitions