Using a kaleidoscopic lens to document museum goers, Charlie Milgrim’s new photo series re-contextualizes the experience of viewing Bill Ham’s light art installation from the De Young Museum’sSummer of Love exhibition. By psychedelically superimposing the viewer onto the digital light show, the visitor becomes an active element. The lens alters the view of the spectator creating a hallucinogenic circle, where nothing interrupts the illusion.
CHARLIE MILGRIM is a multimedia artist from New York City who moved to the Bay Area in her 20’s to attend the California College of the Arts, and later received her MFA from UC Berkeley. She has since participated in the Bay Area arts community through exhibition and curation and has been a member of the Mercury 20 Gallery for the past 10 years. Milgrim has had solo shows at OK Harris in New York, and San Francisco’s Gallery 16 and Haines Gallery. Her work examines the ties and lies between history, science, and culture, whether considering environmental degradation, cultural detritus, or the relationship between money and militarism. Milgrim works with a wide range of materials, from photography to tar paper made three dimensional to precariously arranged found objects, such as bowling balls.