Walking into Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is like walking into a larger than life fine art 'cabinet of curiosities.' Commissioned in 1902 by patron of the arts extraordinaire Isabella Stewart Gardner, the museum contains her extensive and eclectic personal holdings. Gardiner's sublime jumble of art works juxtaposes decorative arts and illuminated manuscripts from across the ages with canvases by the likes of Titian, Rembrandt, and John Singer Sargent, Greek and Roman antiquities, and Asian statuary--reflecting a particular upper class Victorian sensibility. On display in the museum for the next three months, Cliff Evans's new five-channel video installation Empyrean utilizes a similar juxtaposition of disparate visual elements to reflect a contemporary American sensibility. With the internet as his source, Evans animates both militaristic and commercial images to create dramatic moving photomontages that illicit reverence, fear, and humor. Placed within the context of the Museum, his 'digital polyptych' appears like a religious altarpiece, perfectly at home among Gardiner's diverse and evocative collection.
