Bubble Over Green, an exhibition by artist Victoria Fu (b. 1978, Santa Monica, CA; lives in Los Angeles and San Diego, CA), was the museum's first solo commission since its reopening in 2013. Bubble Over Green, was a multilayered audio-visual experience in the former KAGRO building located at 101 W North Avenue in Baltimore's Station North Arts & Entertainment District, on view from February 21-April 3, 2015.
Bubble Over Green consisted of moving images projected onto architectural surfaces, aligning the physical site with the space and textures of digital post-production. To produce the commission, The Contemporary activated one of the last remaining Brutalist buildings in the city of Baltimore. There is an important intersection between architecture and art-making, and given the tremendous spur of activity on North Avenue, the project acted as an avenue to give the artist the freedom to create new work in a unique space outside of a traditional museum or gallery setting. The structure of the former KAGRO building functions as a formal layer of the work, allowing Fu to further her interest in the physicality of the moving image.
Expanding Fu’s previous work addressing the virtual space of cinema, Bubble Over Green referenced our habituated haptic engagement with the digital image and touchscreen. The multi-channel video and neon installations depict performing bodies interacting with layers of digital effects. Actions based on touchscreen gestures and dynamics are translated into multiple, mediated, and sculptural contexts. Bubble Over Green featured performers Polina Akhmetzyanova and Matilda Lidberg with sequences filmed in Sweden in May 2014 with funding from Art Matters Foundation.
Victoria Fu received her BA from Stanford, MA in Art History/Museum Studies from USC, and MFA from CalArts. Her work has been exhibited most recently at the 2014 Whitney Biennial, New York, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla, CA; New York Film Festival, New York, NY; Simon Preston Gallery, New York, NY; IX Nicaragua Biennial, Managua, Nicaragua; University Art Gallery, UC Irvine, Irvine, CA; among others. She lives and works in Los Angeles and San Diego, CA, where she is Assistant Professor of Visual Arts at the University of San Diego.