Bert Leveille
- Editor at Titan Contemporary Publishing
- Jan 15
- 3 min read
Bert Leveille is an installation and video artist as well as a light designer who has exhibited extensively in Illinois since 1971. She has also exhibited multiple times in Los Angeles. Recent solo features includes multiple showings at Starline Gallery in Harvard, Illinois and her collective exhibitions include several inclusions at the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art as well as Blue Moon Gallery in Grayslake, Illinois, and Stola Contemporary Art in Chicago.
The light design and tapestry installations of Bert Leveille entail elaborate watercolor-like acrylic paintings on large unstretched pieces of canvas which are suspended from the air much like a fiber installation followed by light-based art of spotlight color illuminations. These installations are sometimes accompanied by projections of hand-drawn and analogue digitally-altered animations of subjects such as figures playing with a ball in their hand. These enormous works engulf a gallery space and feel very much like an alternative world, similar to a 3-dimensional light show or 3D film. The colorful tapestries seem to glow as they bask in the colorful light designs. These performative works are highly integrative and are not merely paintings, they are designed tapestries engaging as a complex installation followed by an intense hallucinogenic light show which hypnotizes the audience.
These tapestry aspects are best taken with a glass of wine, as they seem to engulf the room with soft glows of pastel and neon colors from light and paint. The immersive experience engages the viewer into an enchanted realm of playfulness and a forgotten dimensionality. As we peer through these draperies, the viewer will feel as if they have sifted through time into the jaws of oblivion. Not in a haunting sense, but one based on contemporary notions of mysticism and mythology. The fine and large canvas tapestries behave like standards or flags representing various states of our mind, as a result the works are highly psychological. With a soft glow of animation and lights, the interactive experience creates a heightened sense of visual stimulation based on color, motion, and form. The color being the lights and paint on the tapestries, the motion coming from the projected lights and animations, and the form from the sculptural installation aspects of the tapestries suspended in the air. Based on the titles, Bert Leveille’s works are based on abstracted interpretations of themes such as dreams, waterfalls, time, and consciousness.
Color Splash (pictured above) remains unusual in Bert Leveille’s portfolio because unlike other installations, this one is presented on clear mylar or transparent plastic tarp. The luminosity of the tapestry hanging in the air makes the pigments appear as if they are suspended in animation. Much like the dripping of aqua from a waterfall, the various colors ‘splash’ and traverse the gravity across the room.
With a talent for color and an innovative vision of interdisciplinary and integrative techniques, the works of Bert Leveille restore a sense of confidence in color-based art. Her works are not merely just paintings, they are integrative performative stages for grand light design and expressive animations. As a result, we are immersed into a thoroughly interactive experience filled with nuanced themes based on the lucid transparent and ever-changing experiences of the human mind. Through these elaborate tapestries and light designs, integrated together, we are transported into another world, a realm of color and luminosity which reshapes our assumptions on perceptions, perspective, and concepts of space.
