Image of the Not-Seen: Search for Understanding The Rothko Chapel Art Series Michael Somoroff and Michael Rees "Imagining the Real" Thursday, June 9, 2005, 7:30 pm Imagining the Real Michael Somoroff and Michael Rees are great friends who share an on going conversation about art, life and meaning. Their lecture at The Rothko Chapel on June 9th, 2005, is a rare opportunity to share in this very personal dialog between these two accomplished New York artists as they engage and examine the world around them, focusing on what the previous lectures in this series have discussed. They share a point of view which is at once curious, entertaining and intellectual, but also deeply spiritual. The two artists will share their perceptions regarding our society’s current definitions of reality, tracing these ideas back to their source; the individual creative process. They will explore the dynamic relationship between the imagination, i.e. the virtual world within each of us, and the physical world where we express these virtual and spiritual “facts”. Mr. Rees and Mr. Somoroff were in Deborah Colton Gallery's "Integrating the Digital Consciousness" exhibition last May. Michael Rees was the curator of the "Touch and Temperature: Art in the Cybernetic Totalism" exhibit, where Michael Somoroff was one of the artists in the show, which also included artists like Matthew Barney, Suzanne Anker Michael Joaquin Grey, Fabian Marcaccio. Michael Somoroff's entire new body of works, the "Query series" was introduced in Houston at the same gallery last May and the entire body of works went into the permanent collection of the MFA. Imagining Now, The Languages of Tomorrow. Artist Michael Somoroff asks us to dream and create reality with him. Today’s postmodern world is predicated on the suggestion that reality is a non-linear environment. Mr. Somoroff traces some of the origins of this model, surveying its development from Gothic times, its evolution by way of modernism, and finally, its most recent incarnation as what he calls “Integral Post-modernism”. He will explore some of the inherent qualities of this construction of reality and the impact of its predominant concepts on today’s culture by investigating current trends in art, technology, mythology, business and morality. Taken together, he will be our guide exploring how these trends affect our collective consciousness now and our languages of tomorrow. The Virtual and the Spiritual: Sculpture and Meaning in the New Millennium Sculptor Michael Rees leads us into his world of “mind, body, spirit”, taking us on a journey into the mind as the ultimate creative projector. Weaving his disparate interests in history, religion, science and metaphor, Mr. Rees defines the act of sculpting as the ritual process one uses to transform the imaginative into reality. It is this act of translation from the virtual to the actual that represents the definitive event in which we all participate. The translation is technical, intuitive, philosophical, and at the same time profoundly spiritual. Mr. Rees reflects on sculpture as a life process and invites us to join him in exploring the role of virtual technologies in the creation of the mosaic we call the world. Journey with him through the technologies of our current age with ancient ideas and timeless principles. Michael Rees and Michael Somoroff have worked together to produce events and lectures throughout the world. Both have accomplished careers in the visual arts and will exhibit original works of art developed especially for the Rothko Chapel grounds. To be with them is to be inspired to the heights of one's own creative spirit.