Rebecca DiDomenico, Mica Chamber Installation, 2006. Courtesy of Michael Lichter.

Rebecca DiDomenico: Mica Chamber
May 12 – July 29, 2006 @ BMoCA

Boulder artist Rebecca DiDomenico created a magical installation — a room and adjoining alcove lined with more than 10,000 mica rectangles.

Each of the tiny, translucent panels overlaid a dizzying array of black-and-white images ranging from past and present figures, often nude and sometimes erotic, to playing cards, centuries-old alchemist diagrams and architectural drawings.

Challenging the detached quality of the traditional art-viewing experience, this installation plunged the viewer into an all-encompassing, almost overpowering sea of imagery, creating a powerful sensory experience.

“A human life time passes in a geological blink of the eye. The rock is split to reveal the treasure. The phenomena of the universe lies buried in a rock, in layers of mica embedded deep inside the earth. The strata on top preserves the layers that were deposited originally, detailed images integrate the whole picture as if directly printed on the rock, a cross-section of an instant in time, a moment when many parts of consciousness collide and re-form. Like a near death experience, where meaningful inventories flood the consciousness in one dazzling moment, there are no set definitions or static ways to view the mica chamber. What one person sees is just that, their own unique experience of the images that pop out at them. The opaque mica has been sliced away leaving a transparent stone through which to filter reality. It is as if the veils have been lifted to reveal the nature of things. The chamber is symbolic of a place, a room to catalogue, digest, and unify one’s states of being. All the images are equal to one another, there is no hierarchy. One thought can surround you, overpower you one moment and the next fade into the bigger picture.

I’m interested in how things that seem so different are really very similar – the way a Tibetan healing manual links with the intricate patterns in a rock or a spider web mimics a wheel. Is there a commonality between Dr. Seuss and the Dalai Lama? Do the patterns in the constellations of stars reflect on the minute particles inside the human body? I hope the mica chamber allows the magnitude of life itself to unfold, a kind of re-invention, a familiar wormhole where all parts of life are interconnected, a complex tapestry for life’s amazing yet ordered variety, and ultimately to express a gratitude for all living things.”

Chamber of Transparencies
An intimate leap of faith,
An ordinary pinpoint,
The blessing of black humor,
Tantric shape shifters of the fierce integrity behind metaphors,
Spirals of pomegranate prayers,
Secret tendrils escape from the wormhole that connects to us all,
A familiar specimen cooking in a cauldron,
Every conceivable composite,
A private experiment in quantum physics,
Awakening to the wild whirl of erotic entanglement,
Gratitude for fireflies and the dazzle of darkness.
A dangerous petal dangling in an altered state,
The fool’s footprint side by side with the philosopher’s stone.
Destiny in the details,
On the nape of the invisible light-body.
The magnifying prism of androgynous wisdom.
What it takes to be in service to the crack between worlds.

— Artist Statement by Rebecca DiDomenico