Tim Tate at work in his studio.
GLASS: What are you working on?
Tim Tate: I’m working on several new directions this fall and winter. Winning the Virginia Groot Foundation award for sculpture earlier this year gave me the money to do some research and development. My newest videos will be shot in 3-D… you’ll actually have to wear the old style blue-red glasses. I like this form of 3-D as it plays into the nostalgic nature of some of my video installations. I’ll also be incorporating LEDs and theramins into my newest reliquaries. As you come up upon it, a motion detector will trigger a red LED, and as you approach it, it will get brighter the closer you are. As you get a little closer, you enter the theramin field, which will interact with your motions.
Tim Tate, Stars in My Pocket, Like Grains of Sand, 2009. Glass, LCD screen, video. H 18, W 8, D 8 in. courtesy: maureen littleton gallery
GLASS: What artwork have you seen recently that has moved you, and got you thinking about your own work?
Tim: I was at the Iziko SA National Gallery in Capetown, South Africa recently. There they had a video exhibit entitled, “Sneeze: 80 × 80” in which 80 video artists from around the world each did 80-second works which were edited together into a single film. It was great to see other artists working in the shortened video format that I work in. In my youth I was obsessed by film in every aspect. I was also taken by a particular camera angle, or just a moment on film…. always a short 15-second sequence. That show was the first time I found other artists who think like I do.
Speaking more broadly, my entire career has been inspired by Marc Petrovic, Herb Babcock, and Michael Rogers. You can see the seeds of each of their work in all my pieces. But also movie greats like Joseph Von Sternberg, Peter Greenaway and the Brothers Quay. I hope others see these associations as well.
GLASS: Do you have any upcoming exhibitions you can talk about?
Tim: I have a few shows coming up. Two galleries are taking me to Red Dot during ArtBasel Miami the first week of December. Because ArtBasel Miami and all the sub-shows are probably 100 times as large as SOFA, it’s a huge opportunity. So many people will be seeing the work who wouldn’t normally.
I’ll also be in a show at the Museum of Art and Design from June to October next year entitled “Dead or Alive,” where I’ll be doing an installation piece with Marc Petrovic entitled, “The Apothecarium.” That’ll be a lot of fun to create with Marc.
In addition, I’ll have 5 pieces in an exhibition titled: The New Materiality : Digital Dialogues at the Boundaries of Contemporary Craft, which will be going on at the Fuller Museum of Craft from May 29th, 2010 through January 16, 2011.
Finally, my work is also can be seen at the Maureen Littleton Gallery in Washington, D.C.