Sharon Louden's installation in Breckenridge, Colorado, challenges perceptions of space, ourselves
Sharon Louden is an artist and writer based in Brooklyn, graciously supporting other artists through her writing, lectures, and seminars. I have followed her for many years. Like me, her practice includes both painting and installation. During Covid I followed on Instagram the development of an installation where Sharon used flexible sheets of wide, ribbon-like reflective metal, to create complex spaces mirrored spaces that seemed to create a world to escape into during a time of isolation.
I was ecstatic when I discovered that our Colorado trip coincided with the timing and location of Sharon’s installation, Barriers to Entry, at Breck Create in Breckinridge, Colorado, and that we could experience it in person. The exhibition is open through September 3, 2023, so if you have a chance, I highly recommend a visit!
Entering the historic building in downtown Breckenridge, Colorado from a crowded summer street, we encountered a quiet mass of reflective surfaces increasingly enclosing the space as we passed the front desk and moved on through the hallway and stairs. The experience magnified my usual awareness of shape, space, and light. The mirror-like surfaces expanded even the intimate corners into a whole universe to explore.
As a visual artist, my sensing of the world is conjured through a balance of feeling the emotion of what I am seeing, experiencing the abstractions of the view, and then trying to make sense of the logic of visual information I am seeing – what is the source of that shape, color, or dark shadow?
The exhibition statement begins: This site-specific, abstract installation uses multiple media, including vinyl, raw aluminum, and oil-on-paper to shape colorful and reflective forms that symbolize spaces made difficult to enter, especially to women and other underrepresented individuals in mountain communities.
I had a fun-house moment recognizing my distorted shape in one of the curving mirrored surfaces, preferring the elongated slender view to the squat distortion of another mirror (internalized cultural biases.)
A second later, I felt the impact of the installation – the distortions in our perceptions of the other and our own inner anxieties of how others perceive us. These distorted perceptions of others – stereotypes, or judgments based on class, clothing, and appearance, create barriers to opportunity. Sharon’s installation reminds us to look carefully at the distorted reflection and try to understand, acknowledge, and recognize the original source, the unique human that stands before us, not so different as we thought.
The densely mirrored installation continued through a hallway, up a twisting stairwell, to a large windowed room on the second floor where colored and mirrored vinyl paths on the floor and wall illuminated the expansive space. Seating cushions offered areas to rest and contemplate, while small oil paintings with overlapping translucent layered shapes, like individual auras, were interspersed at different heights within the mirrored surfaces.
I’ll conclude my writing here, and leave you with more photographs, though still images cannot convey the experience — slight shifts in viewpoint completely change the experience.
