Mary Lucier's Wisconsin Arc video installation explores time and observation at Lennon, Weinberg

Mary Lucier presented new video installation works at Lennon, Weinberg, Inc. in New York City from March 7 to April 20, 2013. The exhibition featured her piece Wisconsin Arc, which combines formal light constructions with documentary elements of everyday life. Created during two years of teaching in Milwaukee, the work includes a three-minute flat screen video at the entrance titled Beauty and the Beast, showing a Hmong family filming on a beach near the Milwaukee Art Museum. The main projection in the inner gallery presents a sixteen-minute loop with layered sequences shot at Santiago Calatrava's Milwaukee Art Museum and nearby Lake Michigan beaches. Lucier's approach layers time non-linearly, contrasting with James Nares's sequential method in his video Street at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The installation includes video stills printed on silk suspended along gallery walls, referencing digital image commodification. Musical accompaniment features Jerry Butler's "For Your Precious Love," evoking 1950s nostalgia. Lucier's work engages with themes of observation, ethnicity, and art's role in spectacle society, drawing comparisons to Georges Seurat's A Sunday on the Grande Jatte and Dziga Vertov's experimental film techniques.