Inner Visions

Revelation — and self-revelation, in some cases — is the underlying theme of Tim Tate’s electronic reliquaries on display at Jane Sauer Gallery. The 11 pieces in this exhibit — none more than 16 inches tall — are clear blownglass jars with finials of colored cast glass, set upside down (much like bell jars) on glass pediments. Inside each orb is a miniature video screen and in some cases audio components and a camera with a lens about the diameter of a pencil eraser. All the technical accoutrements — computer board, wires, plugs, etc. — are revealed.

But the important revelations here are in the viewer’s response to Tate’s hybrid art form and its conceptual nature. Tate bares everything — the guts of his materials and his inner thoughts — in deceptively simple narrative videos vacuumpacked into pretty specimen jars. It’s as if he has cut off his own fingers and preserved them in formaldehyde for us to examine. The trouble is that a finger in formaldehyde looks a lot like anyone’s finger. Even one’s own.

So does a beating heart. “My Heart Is Not Frozen” features a black-and-white video (all Tate’s videos are black and white) of a continually pulsing human heart and adjacent organs, presumably taped during a surgery. It is so compelling to watch that the cast-glass finial almost escapes attention. The two-inch-diameter heart in translucent pink-orange has a textured surface with realistic traces of coronary arteries, like a river branching on a map. It is, of course, a frozen icon, while inside the glass the heart keeps silently thumping away. Don’t be fooled by that still, hard heart, however lovely — outward appearances cannot be trusted.

The finial atop “Like Sand Through My Fingers” is a cast-glass hand holding a small stopwatch. Inside the glass jar, the video shows the tops of 1950s suburban houses as shot from a moving car. Houses, trees, telephone poles and other cars zoom by, right to left, as if the driver simply held a camera pointed out the window. This piece is a tad literal, and its title unfortunately conjures the prologue to that long-running soap opera: “Like sand through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.” Still, it pushes the buttons of nostalgia and loss effectively.

Tate’s interactive pieces are more disturbing because the face that stares back from the video screen — your own — prompts a variety of responses: amusement, discomfort, embarrassment, something akin to the feeling you have when someone catches you looking at your own reflection in a store window as you walk by. (If seeing your own face like this makes you feel confident and happy, call a therapist. You’re in trouble.)

One of these pieces, “Back to the Hive,” features a golden translucent beehive as a finial and three tiny bees on the outside of the glass jar. Approach triggers an audio wave — the sound of a bee’s buzz — which gets louder the closer you get to the piece. Because the audio is trapped inside the jar, the buzz sounds muffled, as does the hum of a beehive in reality. At least two interpretations present themselves immediately. The hive can be home, a place of safety and companionship, or the job site, where one worker matters no more and no less than the worker one cell over (and from which most of the fruits of one’s labor are taken, by beekeeper or business).

Two other interactive works are perhaps the most intense of this exhibit. In “Detector,” the glass globe is pocked by air bubbles, like antique glass, and the finial on top is the boxy form of a Geiger counter. The lens is again on the viewer, and approach triggers that familiar clicking sound. As with the hive, interpretations abound; pick your poison here. We have all been exposed, and we are all being surveilled, all the time — by the government, by our employers, in stores and schools, on the street and sometimes even in our homes. We’re all caught by the camera, and (surprise) we all look pretty much the same, inside and out.

Finally, Tate’s “Call to Redemption” references Islam, with its blue glass finial in the shape of a crescent atop a small sphere. Once again, the viewer is the subject of the live video stream. The recorded voice of a muezzin recites the haunting call to prayer. It’s the title here, “Call to Redemption,” that challenges the viewer. Is that face (mine) among the persons being called? For what sins do I need absolution? Every religion calls thus to its people, does it not?

These works are phylacteries of sorts, the transparent reliquaries in which bits of saints’ bones or hair — relics — are displayed. In many cultures and religions, relics are believed to have magical or spiritual powers, especially for healing. Tate’s relics are temporal, sounds and moving images formally enshrined, encapsulating experiences like cultural specimens. And perhaps, to the contemporary soul, they are no less reliquaries than those containing the bones of a saint.

Contact Hollis Walker at

hwalker259@earthlink.net.

If You Go

WHAT: “Tim Tate: The Vague Haze of the Unconscious”

WHEN: Through May 6

WHERE: Jane Sauer Gallery, 652 Canyon Road

CONTACT: 995-8513, www.janesauergallery.com