Bellevue Arts Museum proudly presents a special video installation by Milan-based, artistic research studio, Studio Azzurro. For over twenty years, Studio Azzurro has explored the artistic and expressive potential of recent technology. Eighteen videos looping luminous and fleeting images on six monitors are arranged in a semicircular configuration within a darkened gallery.

On each screen, hands filtered through an infrared camera appear as white silhouettes (due to their body temperature) for expressive, captivating imagery as they touch, caress, stroke, rub, brush, and manipulate various objects. The gestures are accompanied by resonating sounds that add to ambience of the installation. In the beginning, the objects, being cold, are indistinguishable in the monitors. Through touch and manipulation, the heat of the hands is transferred to the object, heating it up and rendering it visible. Touching is seeing. Dragged out of darkness, the artists explain, “the image will persist as long as our care, our attention will remain, only to 'cool' soon afterwards, disappear back into a darkness full of meaning and remain as a memory.” The silent dialogue that the hand establishes with each element is visually expressed on the screen. The emergence and fading of the object mobilizes a host of poetic allusions. Absence, presence, then absence again grapple with the struggle to survive each moment, and our desire to leave behind a trace of our own existence.