VICTORIA, BC.- The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria presents LAB 8.3: Reconstitution - Nicholas and Sheila Pye, on view through January 18, 2009. Reconstitution is an installation project incorporating a blend of experimental and narrative techniques to shape a cinematic perspective that experiments with visual language commonly used in painting. The installation will be comprised of 3 parts, with all three cinematic ‘panels’ playing simultaneously. The concept for the installation is inspired by altarpiece triptychs from the Renaissance and Medieval periods in art history.

The aim of this project is to create a modern allegorical interpretation of the triptych using video, and sound. The centerpiece will be a conceptual performance based work on a loop, and projected in landscape format. This work will not be a narrative in the conventional sense, but rather a series of constructed tableaus existing in a highly stylized theatrical world. The centerpiece will be flanked on either side by two life sized, full figure portraits of a man and a woman, projected in portrait format, each panel half the width of the center panel. The piece will explore notions of transcendence and the sublime. A meditation on opposing forces such as male and female, seduction and repulsion, dark and light, the sacred and the profane, the viewer and the performer. In this project, three separate parts, each exceedingly different in its own way, will work, in form and intention toward unity.