Jay Dunitz paints with electricity, literally.
It all started with an abandoned refrigerator. Photographer Jay Dunitz stumbled upon it in a neighbor's backyard and became entranced by the painterly qualities of its rusting metal surfaces.
Dunitz next found inspiration in a heap of discarded scraps of metal left to weather in a sculpture yard at the University of California, Berkeley. Photographing the jagged, rusty remnants, he captured an unexpected range of brilliant colors created by the material's oxidation. Thoroughly abstract, the eerie, iconic shapes had all the power of sun-baked ancient ruins. But Dunitz wasn't satisfied. "Rather than just collecting things and photographing them," he recalls. "I wanted to manipulate surfaces."
By 1984 he had begun the process used to create Pacific Light #28 (shown at left). Picture Dunitz standing - in running shoes and latex gloves - on a foam pad, holding a paintbrush wired into a nearby power supply. Dipping this brush into an electrolyte mixture of water and baking soda, he then attacks the surface of sheets of reactive metals (steel, titanium, niobium, or tantalum). Electricity flows through the brush to the metal: by changing the voltage, he manipulates the layers of oxidation and, in turn, the colors - 30 volts for light blue, 60 for fuchsia, 100 for kelly green. Intermittently, he etches grooves and scratches into the surface with a grinder or wire brush. But it's the last step in the process, the photography, that gives Dunitz's work its shadows, turbulence, and dreamlike mystery. After weeks of exploring the plate's surfaces and toying with as many as 30 lights to illuminate one evocative image, Dunitz takes his shot.
The final result: Cibachrome prints up to 48 inches by 64 inches large. Reminiscent of the Abstract Expressionists, the lyrical light paintings can be inhabited by vast landscapes, marine vistas, dark forests, night skies lit up as if by the aurora borealis.
The color comes from light waves, not pigment, but the works hardly have a high-tech feel. "There's a certain spirituality represented by the brush stroke," says the Malibu-based artist, who studied painting long before photography. "There's more to it than the metal or than the image represented."
No longer caught up in "the novelty" of his wired-up method, the 38-year-old artist today is after something else: "The medium was more important than the message. Now, the message is more important."
Dunitz's work is collected in Pacific Light*, a book available directly from Dunitz: + 1 (310) 456-9983.*
