In a room full of sand, Michael Namkung is exploring his body’s relationship to flight.
The Miami artist’s new work “Flying Towards the Ground” is opening at Locust Projects, an art gallery in the Design District. The piece is the result of an intersection between his long history of dreams about flying and falling and 20 years of playing ultimate frisbee — a sport in which the motion of “flight” occurs often.
Namkung says he realized the feeling of flight is the reason he plays ultimate frisbee, and that made him want to “explore that feeling of flight and getting hurt more in depth.”
The actual “flights” themselves are a sort of preface to the work and involve him running, jumping, and flying into a pit of damp sand, where his body leaves imprints.
The installation portion of the work will consist of plaster casts of these imprints — which Namkung calls drawings — hung from the ceiling to symbolize clouds, while video of his flights is projected.
Liz Shannon, the exhibitions and programming director at Locust Projects, says that the piece is exactly the kind of work they like to showcase.
“We couldn’t say no to that, that just sounded crazy and perfect for us,” says Shannon. “We’re all about doing experimental projects that would be difficult to realize in other places so that fitted us to a tee.”
The exhibit will open at Locust’s Project Room on Aug. 29.
A video posted by WLRN Public Media (@wlrn) on Aug 19, 2015 at 12:10pm PDT
