VIDEO: LA Artist Michelle Weinstein Wants to Take You to the Fourth Dimension

On a recent visit to the Hammer I had the serendipitous pleasure of running into an old friend of mine, Michelle Weinstein.  She was dining with my cousin, waiting for an event to begin at the Billy Wilder Theatre.  Since she lives on the other side of town and we don't see each other much, we all decided to forgo the short film screening and catch up over hookah in Westwood instead.

In 2007 I had the good fortune of seeing Michelle's first solo exhibition, Orogenesis, in the burgeoning Downtown Arts District.  Since then she's had two more solo exhibits and has been shown in many group exhibits, including ARSG @ LACMA last summer.

Entrance to Orogenesis (2007)

Detailed, fun and abstract.  These are the words I (a person not versed in art theory/history/criticism) would use to briefly describe Michelle's aesthetic.  For a more authoritative verbal illustration I'll quote Marina Cashdan, who reviewed Michelle's 2010 exhibition, Shine, Pershing Republic in Modern Painters:

"Michelle Weinstein's visionary landscapes are delicate and mesmerizing.  Based on the poem, 'Shine, Pershing Republic,' by the 20th-century Californian poet Robinson Jeffers, the images [...] encompass intricate patterns and shapes, depictions of ships, mountains, orbs, trees, and spacecraft, dynamic black and white circles, and sweeps of pale color."

These days Michelle is working on her next exhibit, Fourth, which will be shown in August 2013 at b. sakata garo in Sacramento.  The name, though partly alluding to the idea of "going forth," mostly refers to the fourth dimension, an abstract Euclidean space used in mathematics.  Guided by the works and writings of Alicia Boole Stott and Charles Hinton, the artist aims to "make an aesthetic experience" of space beyond three dimensions.

"I just try and take what they say the result of the four-dimensional object would be and then I try and create those through spaces," said Michelle between hookah puffs.  "They’re really highly patterned.  There’s a lot of movement and motion, but it’s created through stripes."

"Corvus Lama Mala"; Gouache and pencil on Paper, 24"x24", 2011 

Though Michelle says most mathematicians writing on the subject say the fourth dimension cannot be visualized, she still likes thinking about it.

"It's like exercise for the imagination," she said.  "I'm an artist, not a mathematician."