With featured artist Ivana Dama, a multi-media artist whose work explores the connection between sound, memory, and experience via audiovisual installation, robotics, music performance, and more.
COLOR, LIGHT, MOTION is an online series featuring media artists, scholars and educators in dialogue about artworks from the Bermant Collection of media and kinetic arts.
This series is produced in collaboration with the ArtSci Center at UCLA and the David Bermant Foundation.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Ivana Dama is a multi-media artist whose work explores the connection between sound, memory, and experience. Her chosen media include work with audiovisual installation, robotics, and musical performance. Her work is heavily influenced by her experience growing up in post-Communist Belgrade during the time of the NATO bombings. Her memory of the sounds and vibrations of destruction have led her to work with air and sound as a primary medium.
Ivana is currently pursuing a graduate degree in Sculpture at Yale University, and holds a degree Media Arts and Digital Humanities from UCLA’s School of Arts and Architecture. Through her work, Ivana explores how sounds behave in different environments, including experiments with vacuum, water, and outer space. Ivana has participated in over 30 group shows and solo exhibitions in Portland and Los Angeles. In 2022, Ivana was an Artist in Residence at Harvestworks.
Foundation director Bess Rochlitzer with Executive director of Butler Institute Dr. Louis Zona visited the Butler museum to see how the collection gifted to the museum was installed. She was very pleased with the new home for these historic works!
The David Bermant Foundation: Color, Light, Motion was established in 1986 with the mission to encourage and advocate experimental visual art which draws its form, content and working materials from late twentieth-century technology. The working materials include physical sources of energy, light, and sound. The resulting artworks question and extend the boundaries of the visual arts. To learn more about The David Bermant Foundation and its collection, visit the foundation website DavidBermantFoundation.org.
The Lasso, Alejandro and Moira Sina, 1997
Thomas Wilfred- “Lumia”
Susan Hopmans feeling the NanoMandala projection on sand by Victoria Vesna at the Bermant Foundation gallery.
Clavilux Junior, First Home Clavilux, Thomas Wilfred, 1930
The collection of 98 works valued at several million dollars includes pieces created by many of the pioneers of technologically based art such as Marcel Duchamp (above image), Nam June Paik, Jenny Holzer, Jean Tinguely, Pol Bury, George Rhoads, John Deandria, James Seawright, and dozens more.
ABOUT DAVID BERMANT
David Bermant was one of the most admired collectors of avant-garde art in the United States. His collection of kinetic art includes works which employ both virtual motion as well as actual motion. Art which utilizes video, holography, magnetism, electronics, robotics, chemistry, and various types of light provide a look into the fourth dimension.
The late David Bermant was born in New York City and grew up in Manhattan. In January of 1941, six months after graduating cum laude from Yale University at age 21, he joined the U.S. Army. He ended his army career as a major of artillery in Patton’s Third Army, earning a bronze star with an oak leaf cluster for his actions. In 1947, he married Ruth Jesephson, and later divorced after 46 years. They had four children: Ann, Jeffrey, Wendy, and Andrew. David then married Susan Hopmans and established homes in Santa Barbara and the Santa Ynez valley where he created and maintained facilities to house a large and significant art collection.
David had two great interests: building shopping centers — on the East Coast and in California — and collecting art. Technological art was his favorite because it utilized modern science and technology and was more dynamic than other art that just hung on the wall Bermant felt that such art should be shared in public spaces other than museums and galleries. He established and funded the David W. Bermant Foundation: Color, Light, Motion to ensure the art form most dear to his heart would thrive beyond his lifetime.
Founded as a not-for-profit organization by artists in 1977, Harvestworks has helped a generation of artists create new works using technology. Our mission is to support the creation and presentation of art works achieved through the use of new and evolving technologies.
