Still from Empyrean 5 Channel Video Projection, Cliff Evans 2007

Empyrean n. 1. The highest heaven; specif., a) among the ancients, the sphere of pure light or fire b) among Christian poets, the abode of God 2. The sky; the celestial vault; firmament

Cliff Evans' video installation Empyrean, on view until the eighth of April at PCC's Cascade Gallery is a digital amalgamation of our collaged culture elements. It is a pictorial representation of a synergistic future, collected and compressed. Evans' piece is a brave new world arrived and tanned, full of our apparent ideals of the artists claims to be our 'empyrean'. Based on evidence versus theory, the video presents five separate frames which concurrently move towards the viewer in what appears to be an endless parade of progress. Evans has gathered images of soldiers, busty beauties, political pundits, and dinosaurs to represent history as well as the constantly accelerating race towards the ideals of the global empire of the future. Each new frame displays itself with a peacock's pride despite its content or holistic irreverence to the idea of the soul or the sacred. Any animation within each piece is extremely artificial and marionette like. These choice bits move through the space of each frame like puppets and rightly so-Evans does not hold these characters (the pillars of our society -Brangelina- what not) in high regard; they are at the mercy of their own game. This is Evans' social commentary in high and lo-fi. In most art works this simple method of amalgamation does not usually work; a plus b plus c does not always simply equal d. Yet the removal of our everyday imagery from its context and posited next to itself and artfully arranged is as powerful a social commentary as a Sarah Palin imitation. Evans has literally melded the disparate parts of what we are now to create his art in a sort of sugary yet morbid warning. It is almost too easy, as the physical content is so prolific and blaringly at hand.

Evans' piece is particularly nice to watch, because we can really ask ourselves, "Is this what we really want?" His piece stops the record with a loud scratch; a few fall off our treadmills because we've lost the rhythm, yet most of us keep sweating towards the carrot of the ideal presented everywhere and endlessly. Animals and Icons flaunt themselves in their desert vs. orange grove playground dichotomies. Opposites are emblems on each side of a coin flipped and called in a child's soft game; the consequences willy nilly because each result is essentially the same. Construction, bloody disintegration, meat and coastal condos bloom like the Fibonacci sequence, and all is fertility and industry, skin and artillery. This is all the same boiling suntan of our Dubai/American wet dream, Evans' tells us, and it's just so pretty. This is where our ambitions and hard work are taking us; we've bought into it. This is our empyrean, Evans says.


Still from Empyrean 5 Channel Video Projection, Cliff Evans 2007

All of this becomes inseparable, irreparable, our global empire, our heaven. These are the things we worship and strive for, and this is, honestly, inarguable. Man is now made in the image of himself, but thinner. Critically, Evans' piece could be articulated in a more sophisticated, more elegant abstract language. Some of the basest logos at times seem redundant i.e. the seven eleven/u.s.a. bucks coffee, yet form equals content and thus that which he wishes to articulate are just this: the images and ideas our culture presents us with today, on a minute by minute basis. He does not attempt to create something entirely new to tell us where we are going; he simply uses everything that is already here remastered and then asks," Where do our priorities lead us?" Perfect flowers of people perspire under hot lamps created, manipulated, maintained, and screwed. Even our self created destruction is somewhat sexy.

The position Evans takes does not seem to be a positive one, yet it is somewhat comedic and rather entertaining a la Hollywood. The soundtrack is cinematic and inventive and an absolutely vital emotional element to the entirety of the piece. His aesthetic is as particular and pointed as are the images- a flat, shadeless, sunlight illumines the odd, insect like symmetry of man and machine as we fold more and more into one another. The created animal and skull omens culminate in the pinnacle of Evans' predilections at the end of the loop as a last warning. We could deny these claims, but it seems as if it might be in name only. The images in Evans' piece are as bountiful as .coms in Silicone Valley, and thus we cannot deny them. Empyrean presents us with our value systems as a culture and as a society within which Evans plays director. Look at this, he says. Be entertained and enchanted, enthralled and disturbed, and know that it is you.


Still from Empyrean 5 Channel Video Projection, Cliff Evans 2007