Albert Chong WINGED EVOCATIONS
An Installation on Flight and the Human Condition

Every Child has been awe struck when observing for the first time the flight of birds.

I would dare say that every human alive who has ever observed birds in flight has experienced a deep envy of these creatures. The miracle of the motion they perform in often exuberant defiance of the laws and notions of gravity.

From the hummingbird to the albatross, the finch to the pterodactyl, the sparrow to the now extinct flightless Moa of New Zealand. Being the naked helpless animals that we are, we were not blessed with the gift of flight, but with an imagination so vast we require the heavens but instead are bound to a crowded and unholy firmament. Enslaved to the laws of physics we would not achieve flight until the early twentieth century and then only by mechanical means.

Standing on the cliffs of the glider port in La Jolla California watching hang gliders walk off the edge of a cliff face with a sheer drop of at least a thousand feet. It is that final step over the edge that is the most wondrous, the most courageous, that trust in the known laws of aerodynamics that seems so instinctually unknown in that final leap of faith. That leap of faith is then rewarded with the warm rush of thermals rising to give buoyancy to our trust and kite like wings. This I thought was the closest we have come to achieving the myth of Icarus. Winged evocation is the coalescing of several impulses in my art, combined with a vision of a winged presence. This presence is suggested by the garments.

These are men's suits, leather coats and jackets that are all covered in a skin of pine cone petals that create a prickly armor-like garment. This work includes five suits or garments of the kind stated above. These will be supported by an armature that as indicated by the sketches have bird-like feet. The long rod of the armature connects to the cast head of aluminum. The head has dreadlocks growing from it and is cast from the face of the artist. Connected to other armatures is pairs of goose wings. Each garment is accompanied by its own armature of beating goose wings. These taxidermy wings will operate independently from the garments and from behind each one. The wings are set in motion by Japanese made windshield wiper motors, specifically from the Datsun 210 automobile. Each pair of beating wings is set in motion by the triggering of a motion sensor by the viewer as they move through the work. The walls of the space will have approximately 10 pairs of wing that are mounted to the walls and that are also triggered by the motion sensors. The five winged presences are set in the dice pattern for the numeral five. These are also inscribed in a tight circle consisting of one hundred pounds of feathers.

Written by Albert Chong
Winged Evocations, Allen Memorial Museum, Oberlin, Ohio, March 17, 1998