“My eye for me is a certain power of making contact with things, and not a screen on which they are projected.”

– Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible

Suncatchers is a two channel video installation consisting of time-lapse stereoscopic photographs and images that were accumulated between December 2019 and April 2021. Edited footage is combined with hand-painted animations to simulate perceived stereoscopic vision and mental imagery.

Suncatchers (9’45) portrays daydreams, eye movements, and sheets of memory. Geographical constriction and sudden rapid variations of rhythm are presented with images gathered from a kitchen window of our rented house, Kyoto Japan, Fairmount Park and Center City Philadelphia. Footage has been arranged chronologically depicting the change of seasons and a city that is constantly transforming. Most of the documentation was taken while walking and sharing a life with Yuka Yokoyama during breaks between endless sequences of online classes, critiques and meetings. Time-lapse footage of a small backyard features a polychrome steel sculpture that was made by the artist David Carrow (1942-2020). Yuka’s well tended garden is shown at different points of the year as the days pass from sunrise to night tracing the passage of the sun and fluctuations of ambient light.

Camera Obscura (6’) a video projects inverted shadows onto a wall hinting at the daily activities of a couple within a kitchen window frame.

David Dempewolf has earned a certificate in sculpture from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1998), a BFA from the University of Pennsylvania (2001), an MFA from Columbia University (2005), and has been a resident of the Whitney Independent Studio Program (2007) and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2007).

From 1998-2002 Dempewolf was a primary member of the Basekamp, a collaborative team and exhibition space and is currently the co-founder and co-director of the Marginal Utility gallery (founded 2009) with Yuka Yokoyama in Philadelphia. Dempewolf has collaborated with Jazz musicians such as pianist/composer Jason Moran ‘In My Mind’, saxophonist/composer Miguel Zenon ‘Tales from the Diaspora’, and Immanuel Wilkins ‘Identity.’ Dempewolf has shown singular projects in various group shows in venues such as Greene Naftali (NYC), the CAC (Cincinnati), Whitechapel (London), Locks Gallery (Philadelphia) as well as the Oberhausen and London film festivals.