Cathy Weis Projects has invited artist Jon Burris to present Moment 537, a public-space installation in the windows of WeisAcres and the Emily Harvey Gallery at 537 Broadway. The installation will run around the clock for one week from April 5 through April 12, 2015. it is visible only from the street and best viewed from dusk to dawn; it may not be visible at all during full daylight.

Moment 537, as with all works in the Moment series, incorporates real-world random phenomena into the artwork through the detection of background radiation as a means of exploring real-world randomness. The installation works employ radiation detectors linked to custom light sources: each time a beta or gamma particle triggers the geiger counter, the lamp emits a brief bright flash. In Moment 537, the lighting instruments are constructed to work with the building’s architecture.

As Jon Burris writes on this series, "My central concern is that the work be based on an elemental and real randomness; neutral, value-free and devoid of metaphor, exploring the unresolvable tension between our reflex to organize experience and a sensory field of no inherent organization. Instinctively, we attempt to impose order on disorder and to attribute causality in the face of apparent accident so as to make sense of our environment. And it is inseparable that these are real events—elemental phenomena—significant, powerful and awe-inspiring in themselves."

Note that Moment introduces no radiation to the environment; it simply detects that which is already there. This ambient radiation, overwhelmingly from natural sources, is omnipresent and eternal, the product of both terrestrial and extra-terrestrial processes. It is inherently random by virtue of the physics of its creation.

Jon Burris is primarily a photographer, living and working in New York. Visit www.jonburrisprojects.com for additional information.

We invite you to view Burris' installation from the street in front of 537 Broadway any evening during the week of April 5-12, 2015.