Before the Sun. - Coryn LaNasa

Karthik Pandain's installation, Before the Sun, at Midway Art Gallery was one of those pieces that simply demanded the viewer's full attention. Pandain is an LA based film artists and produces a wide range of conscience-relevant art.

The installation in its bare essentials was composed of a wide range of media. The exhibit had begun with a four-sided structure placing of layers of soil and clay around 900-950 C.E. Atop this structure sits two large glass cases, enclosing 16mm film cameras, projecting on one corner of the gallery a sunrise and a sunset, as seen during the Vernal Equinox from the top of the Cahokia Mounds in Illnois.

The gallery itself was pitched quite dark to obtain the full effect of the piece. To produce one, coherant belief about the piece within a matter of seconds walking into the installation could quite possibly be disbelief. As Before The Sun engulfs you, you begin to capture not only the essentials of what had put this piece together, but how everything seemingly works together perpetually and flawlessly. An artistic system.

Ideas of mortality flashed vaguely into the mind, as one is pitted against the over-used imagery we scan through everyday of sunsets and cheesy horizons, yet - Before the Sun manages to pull off this scenery quite nicely. It might be perhaps, because of the piece's very backstory, and where such a scene was filmed that intrigues the human psyche so skillfully.